Mahendra Singh Dhoni believes the Indian team is still miles away from having a settled combination in limited-overs cricket after suffering back to back defeats in the Twenty20 International and one-day series against South Africa.
The India captain, who is yet to win a series this year, feels the absence of a solid all-rounder and the inconsistency of the fast bowlers is impeding their progress.
– PAKvENG: Rashid narrowly fails to earn England draw
– PAKvENG: Riaz under fire for using foot on ball
– UAE: Lancashire to make ICC their pre-season home
India were blown away in the final game of the five-match ODI series on Sunday when the Proteas amassed 438 runs and then bundled out the hosts for 224 for a massive 214-run victory.
While admitting that nothing worked for his team at the Wankhede Stadium, he feels the focus must be on the processes to achieve consistency. “There are days when it doesn’t work. Also, when the wicket is so true and you have that kind of a partnership, it becomes very difficult to stop the opposition,” he said.
“To be consistent, you have to have a settled team and to a lot of extent, our team doesn’t look to be that settled yet. I know India is more about results but at the same time you will not get results if you are not looking into the process.
“It’s a tough situation but we are looking for the solution, we have to try a few other things because if you are doing the same thing, you will get the same result and we’ll keep talking about the fact that we don’t have a seaming all-rounder.
“We have tried Stuart Binny, people have criticised that also but if you talk of allrounders in India, your best seaming all-rounder is Stuart Binny, your two best spinning allrounders are Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel. Whether you like it or don’t like it, these are the best we have so we have to make the most out of them.”
Dhoni also believes the fast bowlers have yet to raise their standards in international cricket.
“If you see other Test or ODI-playing nation, the fast bowlers come and in one or two years they graduate to the next level – they become the strike bowlers or they learn what their strength is and bowl according to that. To some extent, we have not been able to do that. Once you put in a lot of time and effort in a particular individual and if he doesn’t come up good, then a vacuum gets created.”
