cricket

Updated: Mar 01, 2019 10:15 IST

In his biopic, the character playing MS Dhoni is seen telling the national selectors that the age of a player is not an issue, but fitness is when it comes to picking or dropping senior players. While Dhoni was known to believe in hitting the ground rather than the weight room during his younger days, the former India skipper has turned a new leaf with age and is now a regular at the gym as he looks to keep at the top of his fitness.

This was once again evident during the second T20I between India and Australia in Bengaluru on Wednesday. With Australia spinner Adam Zampa bowling one wide after he saw Dhoni step down the track, MSD was seen making an acrobatic stretch of 2.14m to return to the crease before the keeper could remove the bails. This saw BCCI tweet: “How’s that for a stretch from @msdhoni 😮😮”

Interestingly, Dhoni showed he still has it in him to tank opposition bowlers out of the park as he hit 40 off 23 in the second T20I. It was vintage Dhoni as he hit three boundaries and three sixes in his whirlwind knock. He even put on 100 runs for the fourth wicket with skipper Virat Kohli to give his fans a show they shall remember for a while.

Speaking after the loss, Kohli said: “It was a pretty short series to summarise the performances. Australia outplayed us in all departments and deserved to win. 190 is a good total on most grounds but if there is so much dew as there was tonight and when you have an innings like what Glenn Maxwell played, nothing much you can do.”

Defending his bowlers for failing to restrict Australia, Kohli said dew played vital role in the second innings. “Every team is looking to take each game like that but it’s also important to win matches. We would have liked to get across the line in at least this game but I can’t be too hard on the bowlers due to the amount of dew,” he said.

Kohli also hinted that he would continue to experiment with his playing XI keeping in mind the upcoming ICC World Cup. “We wanted to give everyone some game time, we’ve seen how they react under pressure, there is a series coming up and we’ll try more things. It’s up to them to deliver the goods,” he said.