MS Dhoni’s Bold Verdict As India, England Show Ultra Aggressive Approach In Tests

Legendary Indian cricketer and World Cup-winning skipper MS Dhoni expressed his admiration for a more attacking brand of Test cricket being played recently because of the team’s mindset of not settling for draws. Dhoni was speaking at an event in Goa. Speaking at the event, Dhoni said as quoted by ESPNCricinfo that cricket has evolved a lot over the years. “You can give cricket any term that you want to, what we have seen is cricket has evolved. The way people are playing cricket is very different. There was a time when in ODIs something was considered a safe score, now that score is not safe in T20s too,” said Dhoni.You give something a term, it becomes much more interesting because you start talking about it, you start relating to it but at the end of the day what is it? It’s a way to play cricket. Some people want to play aggressive cricket, some people want to play authentic cricket. A lot of that depends on the kind of team you have got – whether they can change the way they play that cricket. What is important is to realise the strength of your team and according to the strength of the team you decide which is the way you want to play cricket but it takes time. It does not happen that overnight you say, ‘let us start playing like this tomorrow’. You need to give time to individuals because they have played maybe 10-12-15 years of cricket and they have a certain way of playing cricket, so you need to give them that time to change,” he added.Dhoni recalled that he faced some difficult days during his playing days when the draw result was certain on the final day of a Test match and he still needed to keep wickets and “go through the motions”.”For me, the most difficult time during a Test match was the fifth day of a match which is the last day when you knew that 10 per cent it is going to be a draw. I would still need to keep for nearly 2.5 sessions and that was the most tiring part. You see there is no result happening, you are just going through the motions. Yes, bowlers would like to take wickets, batters will try to score runs, [but] there is no result in the game. You think let’s finish this and go, why do I have to be here. So I love the fact there is change in the way teams are playing Test cricket,” he said.