Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Must respect Sachin's decision, says Dhoni

Team India is West-Indies-bound for the T20 World Cup, but the most successful batsmen of IPL Season 3 is not boarding that flight. Sachin Tendulkar will be missed by every Indian, but India skipper MS Dhoni says, "we must respect Sachin's decision to retire from T20."

In an exclusive interview to NDTV, Dhoni, who also spoke about winning the IPL and lots more, said of course the team would miss Sachin, but "I respect his decision, whatever he says because he has done well, given his services to Indian cricket for the last 20 years, if he decides something than we should just respect it."

The Captain is sure the presence of his Chennai Super Kings teammate, opener Murli Vijay, will stand the team in good stead. The in-form Murli has come in at the last minute for Virendra Sehwag, who has dropped out of the tournament.
(Read: IPL needs more minds)

Dhoni is also bullish about his bowlers and is happy with the inclusion in the squad of young Piyush Chawla. "Pragyan Ojha has done relatively well in all three seasons of IPL, same is the case with Amit Mishra who has done really well, but you have to see in this format of t20 cricket, if you have somebody like Harbhajan Singh or Yusuf Pathan, Ravinder Jadeja, who have been doing this job of bowling with batting, in this equation Piyush Chawla gets an edge and he is the best fielder among the lot. We need somebody who can do a bit of batting at the same time. Captains get greedy by saying that you don't need a batsman at number 8 but there is no harm."

And can Team India reprise the thrilling win of three years ago so soon after a hectic IPL season? "This isn't the first time we are playing World Cup and not first time that we are playing so much. We should stop asking. We play throughout the year, five years before or after we will keep playing...the only factor is hopefullly we dont have any major injuries to any players," says the man in command.

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