The Indian captain, Virat Kohli is standing behind his senior-most batsman MS Dhoni, but former cricketers like VVS Laxman reckon that MS should take retirement at least from the T20Is.
With India losing the second T20I against New Zealand in Rajkot, Laxman expressed that the former skipper is taking more time to get going in recent times and that can put the team in a spot of bother in the T20Is.
During the post-match show, Laxman said, “In T20s, MS Dhoni’s role is at No 4. He requires more time to get his eye in and then do the job. But today [Saturday] was a classical example because when Virat Kohli was batting, Dhoni had to give strike to Kohli. Kohli’s strike rate was 160, MS Dhoni’s strike rate was 80. That’s not good enough when India were chasing a mammoth total.”
He further added, “I still feel it’s time for MS Dhoni to give youngsters a chance in T20 format. It will be an opportunity for a youngster to blossom and get confidence playing international cricket. He is definitely an integral part of ODI cricket.”
Dhoni joined Kohli in the middle in the 2nd T20I, when team Indian was down to 67/4 in 9.1 overs, in their chase of 197 runs. But as Virat batted well at one end and kept hitting regular boundaries to keep the hosts in the match, Dhoni found it difficult early on in his innings even to pick singles and that pushed the required rate up for the hosts.
Till the 15th over of the Indian innings, Dhoni’s scoring rate was less than 100 (16 off 18 balls) and that became difficult to Team India to chase down the total in the last few overs of the game and home side ended up to be on the losing side.
But speaking at the end of the game, Kohli backed MS and said: “Eventually we weren’t good enough with the bat. When you’re chasing 200, all the batsmen need to chip in, or one batsman has to keep going at a 200 strike-rate. Tried to do my best. M.S. (Dhoni) was very good at the end. But we were left with a very difficult task.”
The series is leveled at 1-1 after India won the first match at the Ferozeshah Kotla in Delhi and the series decider will now be played in Thiruvananthapuram on November 7.
