You will see bigger stands between me and Murali Vijay: Shikhar Dhawan

Fatullah: Claiming to be a much-improved batsman, India’s Shikhar Dhawan, who returned to form with a blazing 173 in the ongoing one-off Test against Bangladesh, on Saturday said that many more big stands are in store with his opening partner Murali Vijay.
Dhawan added 283 runs for the first wicket with Vijay (150), laying the foundation for India’s formidable first-innings score of 462 for six declared in the rain-interrupted Test match that is headed for a tame draw with Bangladesh placed at 111 for three at stumps on the fourth and penultimate day.

“This is my 14th Test match and I have learnt quite a few things from my previous tours and now you will see bigger partnerships between me and Vijay because once we spend more time in the middle and get exposed to different attacks, automatically the runs start flowing,” Dhawan told reporters at end of fourth day of the Test.

The 29-year-old Dhawan was all praise for Virat Kohli’s captaincy.

“Virat is a very good captain because he holds on to this belief that the team is going to win. It doesn’t matter how it turns out eventually because our aim is to always go for the victory. Virat believes in this funda, he talks to us like a friend and this helps us in understanding him better,” the left-handed batsman said.

With more than 200 overs lost due to frequent rain interruptions in the previous three days, the Kohli-led visitors came out all guns blazing and picked up the first opposition wicket quite early today only to see a bit of resistance from the second-wicket batting pair.

Asked about the flat deck at the Khan Shaheb Osman Ali Stadium, Dhawan said shot-making was easy here.

“It’s more of a batting wicket but our bowlers have been performing well. They got three wickets. During the World Cup the pitches we played on had bounce and swing. But here within two-three overs I realised that I could start playing my shots and after that everything automatically fell in place,” he insisted.

Dhawan, who has had a lean run prior to this game, thanked the support staff including Team Director Ravi Shastri for backing him.

“Ravi bhai has been a very influential person in our team. When I was going through a bad patch in Australia the entire support staff was behind me and that was the reason I could come back and score runs. You feel happy when people back you to do well.

“I am a naturally aggressive player, I like to go for my shots at the first opportunity. I plan my innings after analysing the opposition attack, but I improvise according to the match situations. I like to play according to the merit.

“I am very satisfied because I haven’t been performing too well in Tests. It felt really good scoring big runs and I felt it came at the right time,” said Dhawan.

Talking about the frequent rain interventions, Dhawan said, “It is very disappointing because we get up very early to come to the ground. We look forward to play cricket and when it doesn’t happen we feel sad. But it (weather) is not in our hands, so we have to accept it and move on.

“According to the weather forecast we expect a lot of rain (tomorrow) but hopefully we will get to play for sometime.”