JOIN USMahendra Singh Dhoni finally got to bat at his preferred No 4 position, and he responded with a fine 80. The Indian captain confessed that playing some 200 plus innings down the order, had begun to hamper his ability to rotate the strike.
Dhoni wanted an opportunity to go for his characteristic big hits, and he laced his innings with three towering sixes and six boundaries.
“It was important that I express myself, something I wanted to do for a long time. If you are batting at number five and six especially when your top order is batting so well, you don’t get a chance to bat how you want to bat. If it keeps on happening for a long time, tendency is you do not fluently rotate strike and that was what was happening with my batting,” said Dhoni, whose half century on Sunday came after a year.
“When you know you have just one batsman after you, you actually weigh in a lot of things. I have always said process is more important but at that slot it becomes result-oriented. That has actually hampered my batting to a lot of extent. Personally, also it is good for me to go out there and set pace of the game. I can play shots over the fielders and that was something I was needing in my batting.”
Dhoni asserted that No 4 was an ideal position for him to play freely.
“I have batted down for so long that I always play according to what the situation demands. So I felt No. 4 was an ideal position where I can go and express myself. With Hardik coming in at eight, it gives me the liberty to do that,” he said.
Meanwhile, New Zealand captain Kane Williamson said Virat Kohli, who struck a brilliant unbeaten 154, and Dhoni took the game away from them.
"It was obviously frustrating to lose those wickets in the middle in a clump, we were probably looking at a bit more at that stage. Neesham and Henry were outstanding," Williamson said. "You have to dismiss them, Kohli and Dhoni put on 150 and took the game away.”