Indian opening batsman Shikhar Dhawan is struggling to score runs in shorter formats of the game. Since his fifty in New Zealand, the left hand batsman has failed in nine innings with 30 being his highest score.
Nathan Coulter-Nile got better of him in the first ODI in Hyderabad while he was undone by part-timer Glenn Maxwell in the second match in Nagpur.
Former Indian cricketers Aakash Chopra and Vijay Dahiya, who have played with Dhawan for their state Delhi, feel there is no problem with his technique and he will turn it around in the upcoming games.
“There is no denying Dhawan is going through a bad patch but with only three international matches left, I don’t see any drastic changes happening,” Chopra told PTI on the eve of the third game.
“If he has scored 5000 plus ODI runs (5199 from 125 games), it means that he has been around for a reasonable period of time, seen ups and downs to have scored that many runs. “His record in multi-nation tournaments (World Cup, Champions Trophy, Asia Cup) is fabulous, so it could well be a matter of time that he is back in form,” he added.
Dahiya thinks Dhawan’s current slump is because of his mindset.
“I won’t say technique is a big issue here as the boundaries that he got were all in-front of the wicket. May be not on the off-side but those were not behind the stumps shots either,” said Dahiya, who believes that every individual reacts to pressure in different situation.
“What he was trying to do was to score quickly and that’s what happened against Maxwell. He probably felt that since Maxwell is a part-time, he can score quickly and that’s why played that pull shot,” Dahiya said.