MS Dhoni admits to chaos in final stages at M Chinnaswamy Stadium, but collective wisdom resulted in a win
Bangalore: Mahendra Singh Dhoni has always been icy under pressure. The Wednesday night drama at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium added one more story to the list of Dhoni's legend - steering India to win from improbable positions.
There was a sense of inevitability when Dhoni gave the ball to Hardik Pandya to bowl the last over against Bangladesh. He had just 10 runs to defend against Mushfiqur Rahim and Mahmudullah – fine hitters of a cricket ball. But in the end, India won by one run. Dhoni, appropriately, fetched the winning moment by running out Mustafizur Rahman.
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It's celebration time: Rohit Sharma (extreme left), R Ashwin, Hardik Pandya, Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni celebrate India's last-ball win over Bangladesh in the ICC World T20 game at Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore on Wednesday night. Dhoni's Indians snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Pic/PTI
Dhoni later revealed the topic of the lengthy discussion between him and Pandya. "We were just discussing what would be a good length to bowl. Whether to go for yorkers, and if so, whether you want to bowl it on the stumps or wide outside off stump. Depending on the bowler, you have to see as to what the best options are. I won't elaborate on what was said because its part of our strategy, so maybe by the end of the tournament I can say more about it. That's what we were discussing - the best plan at that point of time. I feel he (Pandya) executed the plans well," said Dhoni.
Dhoni had other options like Suresh Raina and Yuvraj Singh to entrust the final over. So, why did he choose Pandya? "It was quite an easy decision, the reason being that the batsmen were scoring quite freely and I knew that I had to take that one over from somebody, be it a spinner or Pandya. I said what is important is to make a game from it and that's where I decided to use a proper bowler. According to the amount of runs needed at that time, we'll see," he added.
Dhoni also gave a peek into his calm mind amid turbulence around him. "I think what's important is to listen to everyone. In situations like this, it's literally chaos. You're trying to manage chaos. Everyone will come, he will have his own opinion, often the opinion of a batsman is very different to that of a bowler. But what you have to do is to see what the strength of a batsman is who is batting at that point of time and how the wicket is behaving. Whether there is reverse swing or not, all these things you need to calculate.
"But at the end of the day you push the bowler to bowl what you feel is good at that point of time. But having an open mind really helps because under pressure you may have a tunnel vision and that's where the views of others come in handy," he added.
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