M.S. Dhoni believes Indian cricket should be looking at long-term goals, instead of only focusing on series-by-series performance as a team. The Indian captain replied to questions about his priority as skipper in the ODIs against South Africa. Excerpts:
On the performance in the fifth one-dayer not being good enough:
Almost all the strategies were used by fast bowlers. From yorkers, cramping the batsmen, using the short-pitched deliveries. The spinners tried cramping them up, bowling wide. There are days when it doesn’t work and when the wicket is so true and you have that kind of a partnership; it becomes very difficult to stop the opposition. I admit mistakes were made in bowling and fielding could have been tighter.
On the importance of the result weighed against conscious decision to change batting and bowling orders:
I know cricket in India is more about results but at the same time you will not get results if you are not looking into the process. To be consistent, you need a settled team and to an extent, our team doesn’t look to be that settled yet. We have to look at the venue, the kind of wicket that is provided and accordingly make changes. We have made changes in the batting order to see what gives more strength, what looks like a good composition when we are chasing. You have to study these things.
On areas where Team India can do with better options:
It’s a tough situation but we are looking for the solution. We have to try a few other things because if you are doing the same thing, you will get the same result and we’ll keep talking about the fact that we don’t have a seaming all-rounder. We have tried Stuart Binny, people have criticised that also but if you talk of all-rounders here, he is the best seaming all-rounder, your two best spinning all-rounders are Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel. Whether you like it or not, these are the best we have and [we must] make the most out of them.
On views about India’s struggle in bowling since the 2015 World Cup :
We tried going for fast bowlers – bowlers who are quick, but we realised that they are giving the opposition more runs and we were better off playing with people who are more confident of sticking to their line and length. Ideally, Mohit [Sharma] should be the third seamer but you have to mix and match to spot your best death bowler, who can do well in middle-overs, a good new-ball bowler.
It’s a transition phase, sometimes it takes time. I feel there is a bit of difference between top strike bowlers in first-class cricket and leading strike bowlers at the international level.
If you see any other Test or ODI-playing nation, fast bowlers come and in one or two years graduate to the next level - they become the strike bowlers or learn what their strength is and bowl according to that. To some extent, we have not been able to do that and also, once you put in a lot of time and effort in a particular individual and if it doesn’t come up good, then a vacuum gets created where you look for other individuals.