India can bounce back, says Ross Taylor

Chris Dhambarage reporting from Dambulla

New Zealand captain Ross Taylor warned his team that India could bounce back with a vengeance when the two teams clash in a do or die contest of the Tri Nation tournament at the Rangiri Dambulla International Stadium under lights today.

India might be going through a lean period but Taylor believes that the recent poor form would make their opponents even more dangerous. I think it almost makes them dangerous, they didn’t play that well against us in the first game, and then they came back and played well against Sri Lanka.

I would not read too much on the Indian side. They are a good batting unit. They have played a lot of cricket. I am sure with their experience they will come firmer and we just need to put pressure on them,” Taylor added.

On whether India’s pathetic batting form would work to New Zealand’s advantage, Taylor said that the Indian batsmen are not the only ones struggling in the seaming conditions in Dambulla.

“I think every top order has struggled, not just India. We have also struggled at the top and Sri Lanka had their troubles as well. It has done lot of things. I guess their batting is under pressure but I would say even we were under a bit of pressure,” he explained.

Meanwhile Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni said that the team needs just one individual brilliant performance from the top order batsmen for the entire line up to click well.

“You want one batsman to play a big innings in all games, whichever the batsman may be, especially on this kind of wickets. It can be termed as individual brilliance because you have one batsman batting through and the others batting around him,” Dhoni said ahead of today’s vital game.

“It’s more about the mindset because in one-day cricket you are so used to going after and hitting the bowlers right from the first delivery. It’s not only in the sub-continent, throughout the world you see wickets are a lot flatter now, especially for the one-dayers,” he explained.

“If you talk about the batting collapses, it’s happened twice in three games. But if it is said that this is the batting strength of our side, I won`t agree with that. One thing we can`t deny is that we have had two batting failures and we have to rectify the problem, get on the wicket and try to score some runs,” he added. “As a team, we are disappointed about it. But if you see, all the matches have been one-sided, which suggests if you lose too many wickets early, there is a big batting collapse.

We have seen it happen throughout the tournament,” he said. The batsmen are trying to work out their plans as to what needs to be done. They are not getting out to rash shots. They are trying to battle through and there are times when you can’t do that.

That’s what happened in the last two games when we had batting collapses. So at the end of the day, when you are in the middle, you just have to find a way as to how you can get the runs because the pressure keeps on mounting,” he added.