India crashed to a humiliating nine wickets loss against Australia in their first Super Eights matchup of the T20 World Cup and skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni blamed it on the ‘changed’ nature of the surface following a brief spell of heavy drizzle at the start of the match.
“When we played the last match with five bowlers, then our performance was really good,” Dhoni was quoted by Deccan Herald.
“Based on just this one match, to say that our bowlers didn’t do well, will not be right because we have to look at the conditions as well. If you see, when our batting was over, there was a light rain and the umpires let the game continue and stopped play only when the rain got a bit heavy,” he added.
“After one over it was their option of taking the roller and they took the light roller and then when we went to bowl again, there were rains. And once the ball becomes wet, the ball will not do much. That’s the reason why all our three spinners and part-timers, they couldn’t bowl well,” the report further quoted the Indian skipper.
Meanwhile a report in The Times of India says, that Dhoni also criticized his batsmen for the poor show.
"May be if the top order would have stayed for a bit longer, with the new batsman coming in, they would play their shots with someone at the other end. The result could have been different because we struggled a lot and yet we were able to score 140-odd runs which mean a bit more and the result would have been different,” the report quoted him as saying.
Dhoni also defended his decision to field two specialist spinners besides letting his part-timers to turn their arms over.
"At that point of time you think of how you get through the adversities. The pick was, we wanted to pick Rahul (Sharma) because he did really well for us in the IPL,” said Dhoni
"If you see his bowling analysis, he did the job he was supposed to do. As far as decision of playing 3-2 was concerned, I think all the spinners did well.
"Jadeja was a bit expensive but the normal scenario we always play him because he gives us the balance when needed. The part-timers also contributed. Raina bowled two very good overs. Overall, it went our way because in between, we were able to pull the game back towards us,” Dhoni was quoted in the Times of India report.