If it was Adelaide’s Man of the Match Virat Kohli who addressed the pre-match Press conference in Melbourne, it was Melbourne’s Man of the Match Shikhar Dhawan who spoke on behalf of his skipper at the WACA Grounds here on Friday. Departing from the usual pre-match topics of discussion, the opener who has been having a fantastic run with the bat in the World Cup, talked about how a sorted mind, calmness at work, his romance with Melbourne both in cricket and personally, his love for cricket in Australia, Ravi Shastri’s booster presence for him and what it takes to step out of a bad form.
“Just staying calm and working hard and keeping work ethics strong is what worked. Of course, it’s always a learning thing. I enjoy the journey rather than the destination, I think. So I was enjoying that phase of my life too, and I learned a lot. I changed a few things, but not any major things, just little things,” he said. Having been back among runs, Dhawan knows that he will be carrying extra confidence going into next game against UAE although any batsman at the start of an innings is circumspect. “Yeah, of course, when you play back-to-back good innings, you get that extra confidence or edge when you go into the third innings. I feel it’s a very normal thing. Whenever a batsman is going to start his innings, he always feels some hesitation. That’s a very natural thing. I feel it all the time. It’s a very normal thing.”
While UAE as opponents are not in the same league as Pakistan or South Africa but that won’t changed the intensity as far as Team India is concerned. Will UAE be taken lightly, pat came the reply, “No, not really. We play the game in the way it has to be played. We are going to play with the same fighting spirit and going to keep the same intensity tomorrow.”