Internet Desk: Indian cricket team’s fielding coach R Sridhar has lauded former India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni after he played a match winning innings at Pallekele during the second ODI couple of days back. According to him, Dhoni always tries to perform at his best in every match. He further added that Hardik Pandya has recovered sufficiently from cramps and is available for selection for the next game.
“MS leaves no stone unturned to make sure he is at his best going into every game. He knows his body best and he knows what he needs to do. He is such a thorough professional.
“On Thursday, Hardik Pandya was cramping. He’s perfectly alright now. He should be ready for the next game,” said Sridhar at the pre-match press conference today.
Sridhar said the team management will continue to experiment with the batting order in the next matches to come despite a middle-order collapse in the second ODI against Sri Lanka.
“The way we look at every game is that we take something into the next game and the remaining part of the series. I think the way the last game shaped up was a wonderful learning curve for us,” Sridhar said today.
“Even before the series started, we all knew that there was going to be some experiments from us going ahead over the next 18 months. It has been a great learning.”
India recovered from a precarious 131 for seven to record only their second win at the Pallekele International Cricket ground on Thursday.
“Akila Dananjaya bowled brilliantly in the last game. We take that forward, and we’ll make sure we won’t repeat the same mistakes going forward.
“We wanted give the other players a hit because Rahul hadn’t batted in the middle in a one-day game so we wanted to give him that opportunity. It was just an experiment. (But) It won’t stop.
“We will try out different players in different slots to get the best exposure to get the best out of each player. That’s the endeavour of the team management,” he added.
Along with fitness as a prime parameter, India also aim to be the best fielding unit on the field, as skipper Virat Kohli had put it before the second ODI. As such, Sridhar’s task in this long limited-overs’ schedule as well as in the build-up to the 2019 ODI World Cup is cut out.
“There is no dearth of motivation as far as the players here are concerned because the biggest motivation is that they are representing the country. As far as differing fielding drills: it all depends on the workload. If someone is playing five or eight games on the trot, we are very careful with workload.
“We design drills and the loading of the fielding drills is very much tune with that. For somebody who is not playing, the workload is a bit more. That is something we monitor very closely, reason being we want them to be at their best whenever we take the ground,” he explained.