India are all set to face South Africa in the 2nd ODI on October 9 (Sunday) in Ranchi. Ranchi is also the hometown of legendary Indian cricketer MS Dhoni, who called off his international career two years ago. However, he still plays in the IPL and it was expected that the journalists might ask questions related to him in the press conference.
Shardul Thakur, who was attending the press conference on the eve of the match, was asked if the Indian bowlers are lacking consistency because they no longer receive guidance from MS Dhoni on the field. To this, Thakur had the best reply as he mentioned the qualities of the World Cup winning captain. At the same time, he asked the journalist to go and check the records as he believes that bowlers are still consistent.
“Everyone misses Dhoni because his vast experience matters a lot for everyone. He has played more than 300 ODIs, and more than 90 plus Test matches. It’s very difficult to find someone as experienced as him. Our generation has played with him hence we do miss him,” said Thakur.
“As far as consistency goes, I think even bowlers playing for other teams tend to get hit for a lot of runs when they play in India. In the T20 series against South Africa, if you are going to criticise the bowlers you need to criticise their bowlers too. We won the series after all, their bowlers also got hit for a lot of runs.”
Thakur firmly believes that bowlers do get hit for runs depending upon the conditions they play in. However, he also asked to put the focus on opponents’ bowlers who also leak runs in the same conditions.
“I feel before you ask about someone’s consistency, you should check what conditions they played in and how the pitch was. Many a times in an ODI game a team scores more than 350 runs and that is a situation where all bowlers are taken for runs. But are the opposition also able to score runs. Whatever matches happen here are never one sided. Regardless of how the pitch, we have always given a good fight. We may have lost one or two matches here and there but we have won maximum matches. So I feel there is a lot of consistency within this team,” said Thakur.
