Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has cautioned the media on not to speculate on the future of Sachin Tendulkar. He was addressing the media after India had beaten Australia in the fourth Test here in the Capital.
“Do not speculate on Sachin's career. In 2005, you (media) also said the same thing but that never happened," said Dhoni, adding that the win wasn’t about revenge.
“Doesn’t matter if it’s 4-0, 2-2, 3-1. I like to keep words like revenge out of the series. Then very next question people ask is spirit of the game. Revenge and spirit of the game, the vocabulary gets too confusing,” he said, bringing a smile to the present scribes.
He also spoke about the double standards in team strategies. “When four fast bowlers play, it’s strategy and when three or four spinners play, it becomes a bad wicket! When a deep point, deep fine leg and deep third man is kept for Virender Sehwag, it’s a strategy but if M S Dhoni uses a deep point or deep square leg for David Warner, it’s a defensive field set,” he added.
But he seemed happy with the performance of his young players, both batsmen as well as bowlers. “I was very impressed with Pujara as he came out to bat despite being injured. Openers have performed very well. Shikhar batted very well and Vijay has batted well over a period of time. Jadeja has bowled well and he might take some time to do well with the bat. If he does well, we have an advantage abroad as we can think about playing five bowlers,” the Indian captain made the point.
He also said that though Ravichandran Ashwin was under pressure but also said that his performance has answered the critics after his 29 wickets effort in the four-Test series which included four five-wicket hauls.
“He was under a bit of pressure. If you have a lot of variations, at times you are not consistent enough. I think it was very important that he backed himself. He needed to have his own plan as well as adhere to team strategy. He performed really well,” added the wicket-keeper batsman.
Captain on the losing side on the day Shane Watson conceded defeat saying that the visitors haven’t played their best cricket. “The 0-4 margin has been extremely disappointing for us. We came here with high hopes of winning the series but haven’t been able to get the desired results. We haven’t played our best cricket. It’s been a big challenge for Australia to continue to improve and learn very quickly from this defeat,” he said.
He also said that collective batting failure, even on his part was the main reason for the Australians ending up on the losing side. “I haven’t scored enough runs. I needed to score more runs but it was disappointing. I have played a lot of cricket here in India during IPl and had knowledge of the conditions here but I failed to score runs myself. The top-order did not score enough runs. We haven’t performed as a batting unit. Our efforts weren’t good enough. I personally take the blame as a leader for not scoring runs,” the Australian captain added.