Dhoni pat for in-form Bhajji

The offie has had South Africa in all sorts of trouble in the one-dayers, figures of four for 111 from 29 overs not entirely doing him justice. “Harbhajan has done really well,” Dhoni said on Thursday afternoon. "He is bowling as well as you have seen him bowl throughout his career. So that’s a big plus for us. We are regularly using him in the Power Play, that’s a positive.”

Despite India being one win away from a historic maiden one-day series in South Africa, Dhoni refused to get carried away, saying his team would treat Friday’s fourth one-dayer as just another game.

“It’s the process that s important for us, we are not thinking about the result. We know that if we take care of the process, the results take care of themselves. For us, it’s important to play good cricket, when we lost the first game, what we felt was it was very important to have a positive state of mind. We try to be in the same state of mind; because we play so many games, mentally we cannot fluctuate too much. For us, it’s just another game for us. Our main focus will be not to repeat the mistakes of the previous matches in the coming games.”

India had contemplated resting fast bowlers during the series, but Dhoni admitted that could be difficult now. “We need to play our best quicks,” he stated. “Zak hasn’t played too many ODIs in the last year, it is important for him to get back into the groove. A bit of match practice will definitely help. If needed, we can rest them in the two warm-up games (before the World Cup). We will still try to play the best XI.”