Birmingham: India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni showered his
young bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar with praises for his terrific spell of
eight overs that set the tone for India's facile eight-wicket victory
over arch-rivals Pakistan in the ICC Champions Trophy on Saturday.
"He (Bhuvneshwar) is not someone who is very quick but he bowls in
very good areas. In these conditions, he used the new ball well as he
can swing the ball both ways. Bhuvneshwar put a lot of pressure on the
opposition. He has only played a few ODIs but he will only improve,"
Dhoni said at the post-match presentation ceremony.
Dhoni says he is not too concerned about India's middle-order that hasn't been tested in the three matches so far.
"We have a settled middle-order consisting of myself, Raina
(Suresh) and Jadeja (Ravindra). We have played a lot of matches and only
thing is that we need Raina to get some more practice at the nets. Also
the middle-order got a fair hit during the two warm-up games."
While death bowling can still be "improved", Dhoni feels that fielding has been top-notch in this competition.
"It's good that we are doing well in all three departments. The
individuals have taken responsibility. At this point we are a top
fielding side in world cricket. I had the cushion of wearing gloves
while catching but others were doing it with bare hands in cold and
windy conditions."
"I just followed whatever the coach and captain told me. Since the
ball wasn't swinging much during practice games, I tried to keep things
as simple as possible and my hard work has paid off."
Rival skipper Misbah-ul Haq admitted that batting failure was one of the reasons for this dismal show.
"We were disappointing with the bat but the frequent stoppages also
didn't help our cause. I don't know what happened as guys were in good
form during the tour of Ireland but here we were under pressure from the
first match and couldn't come out of that," said Misbah.
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