The Indian Cricket team felt the full force of the crowd’s ire while batting during the 2nd ODI, in Lords, The Mecca of Cricket.
After losing wickets consistently while chasing a strong target of 323 runs, the Indian batting particularly former Captain M S Dhoni, showed Defensive strategy to chase down the target. The crowd did not react well to this slow strategy, as the required rate was going up and wickets were falling down as well.
As such nobody understood the reason behind the Indians not going for the chase aggressively, as this is a three match ODI series between two nations and a depleting run rate would not have really mattered, as it would have mattered in a Multi-Nation tournament. The pitch was good to bat on and the ball was coming onto the bat very nicely for the batsmen to hit their shots.
Dhoni completed 10,000 runs in ODI Internationals during the course of the match, however there was not much applause from the crowd for this record as it was apparent that India were playing a game to lose looking at the way they were chasing the target.
It was very disappointing from an Indian perspective to lose the match by a huge margin of 86 runs. The expectation of the crowd had increased after the dominant show of the Indian team in the first ODI and the T20 series win against the home side. The Indian crew of the crowd was expecting a thrilling finish to the match after a huge score of 323 runs was scored by the English team, but was disappointed by the slow scoring rate of the otherwise dominating Indian Batsmen
Knowing M S Dhoni well, he is someone who does not take criticism lightly and hopefully he comes all guns blazing in the Last ODI to make India win the exciting ODI series.
During the Flag end of his career M S Dhoni would want to retire on a high, and this could be the boost required to pep him up.
*Image and Text Sourced from my other blog here *