Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni said the team’s ability to stay calm under intense pressure and manage the “chaotic situation” with a cool head paved the way for their nerve-wracking one-win over Bangladesh in the ICC World Twenty20 here.
The prospect of securing a semifinal berth at stake, India survived a mighty scare to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in front of a packed crowd at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, helping them to the second position in the group.
“In a situation like this, it’s literally chaos. What you are trying to do is you’re trying to manage chaos,” Dhoni said after the match.
“Everybody will come and he’ll have his own opinion. Often the opinion of a batsman is very different to the opinion of a bowler. But what you have to do is you have to see what the strength of the batsman is who is batting at that point of time, how the wicket is behaving, whether there is some kind of reverse swing or no reverse swing on offer. All these things you need to calculate and I feel what really helps is you listen to all of them.
“But at the end of the day you push the bowler to bowl what you feel is good at that point of time. If I am convinced that this is something I want to do, I will go ahead with it but definitely having an open mind at that point of time really helps because at times in situations like these under pressure, that’s where the input of others comes in. But you have to assess everything and it has to happen in a very short span of time.”
Dhoni said the victory will not erase the pain of the 2007 loss to the same opponent that knocked India out of the World Cup.
“We still remember 2007 loss. The reason being we were not able to qualify for the next stage in spite of playing good cricket. We are also human beings – we also feel hurt if we have not done well. I think it is an emotional connect to the game and I think this victory does not ease 2007 loss,” he said.
Dhoni hailed the younger players in the side for stepping up and performing in key roles. He specifically gave credit to Hardik Pandya and Jasprit Bumrah, who looked nervous at the start after a misfield that led to a boundary and a dropped catch.
“As far as Hardik is concerned, there is a phase where there would be ups and downs. Once you are through these phases or chapters, you become an accomplished player as a bowler and as a batsman,” he told reporters at the post-match press conference.