JOIN USHaving helped India save the third Test, which eventually turned out to be the final five-day match for him, MS Dhoni said he was happy with the overall performance of the team. Excerpts.
On if the draw was satisfying: Overall I am quite happy. We lost early wickets, we always try to test ourselves or that’s what it seems like. We put pressure on ourselves and there wasn’t enough pressure on them.
We had to fight it out and overall if you see, it’s a good performance by the team. Again, we bowl with four bowlers which means it becomes tough on our bowlers.
On if he was surprised by Australia playing it safe: I have two answers to that and it depends upon what kind of answer people want. One is spicy and the other is a sober one. But I would say, it’s their territory and let them decide what they want. It was up to them when they wanted to declare.
On if India’s batting in Adelaide delayed Australia’s declaration: To some extent I would say yes the reason being if you see the Adelaide wicket, it was assisting the spinners and if we had a bit partnership going, we lost a couple of quick wickets there, and played the number of overs the result would have been in our favour. That’s what it suggests from the outside, so that would have played on their mind.
On promoting KL Rahul: The reason behind promoting Rahul was, he is also an opener and also the fact that, we thought, there may come a situation as to what could happen, and what really happened, and in that situation Pujara is a better man to have.
Also, at the same time it gives us a chance to test Rahul because he is a top-order batsman, he was batting really well in the nets so we thought he can do well at number 5 or 6.
We shouldn’t really judge him on just one performance, he is someone who really looks very compact and good. And this is the new era of cricketers where they want to play the shots to get out of pressure situations.