By: Tarish Bhatt
Assurances from the team management helped Shikhar Dhawan to get out of the lean patch, which saw his struggling for consistency. According to top sources in the team, senior teammates, including MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli assured Dhawan that he would be part of the playing XI and apparently told him to stay focused and spend time on the crease.
The sources revealed that Indian team director Ravi Shastri spoke to Dhawan at length and discussed his shortcomings. Apparently, Shastri told the Delhi based opener that “every player has his own way of approaching a situation and there was no fixed rule as to how a player should cope with a certain technical issue”. Later, the former Indian all-rounder also spent some quality time with Dhawan and worked on his technical flaws in the nets.
Dhawan was also given an environment to make him believe that he is “a very special member of the team”. The breaks given to him during the tour also helped him to recuperate and understand his role better. It is revealed that Shastri spent more than a month fixing Dhawan’s problem. In the process, Dhawan needed to make a few minor adjustments to bring in more clarity into his batting.
The Indian opener was also told about how he had the game to collect those crucial runs later in the innings and not to worry about the run-rate early on. By the time the World Cup was about to begin, Dhawan even exuded confidence about his batting form and telephoned his mental state to his coach-cum-mentor Madan Sharma. The left-hander also told his coach that he would do well in the World Cup and not to judge him by this bilateral series form.
