Breaking 'em to pieces, the Mahi way

When the folks at Crowded House, the rock band formed in 1985, penned a single titled Four Seasons in One Day, they had Melbourne in mind. In fact, vocalist Neil Finn had said as much about this great city.

"The songs were first written in East St Kilda, rehearsed in South Melbourne and mostly recorded in South Yarra and Caulfield. Some of those lyrics first dawned on me as I drove between these places in my old FJ (Holden)," the iconic musician from New Zealand had revealed.

Thankfully, Sunday wasn't one such day. When your Android tells you it's 14 degrees Celsius with a "real feel" of 12, you know it's cold. Not necessarily pleasant unless, of course, you resort to body warming techniques apart from standing under a hot shower. Hope it doesn't stay this way on Thursday, March 19, when India lock horns with neighbours Bangladesh at the MCG.

In a way, MS Dhoni & Co. are better off resting in Auckland. Actually, the reason why Team India have stayed put in New Zealand (until Monday evening) is because of 'logistical constraints'.

Dhoni made his displeasure known by revealing that the boys had a tough time sorting out their sleep patterns after the long journey starting from Perth to Melbourne to Auckland to Hamilton. "We hope we get business class flights to Melbourne. Our last trip was a tough one. We had to undertake a road trip from Auckland to Hamilton last week," he said.

That's Dhoni's only worry, so to speak. He must be extremely happy with his team's performance as well as his personal form. Against Zimbabwe on Saturday, he masterminded India's chase in some style. At the post-match press conference, Dhoni was obviously asked about his exploits. How he does it? Again and again and again.

First, he smiled. And then, he broke it down for the mere mortals assembled in the press conference room.

"I think what's important is to break the number of runs into small, small criterion. You may say, okay, next two or three overs let's look for 10 runs or 15 runs or even eight runs if someone is bowling really well. But at the same time, it's a team effort," he said.

"You can't really miss out the fact that somebody like (Suresh) Raina, how he batted in the other end also eases up the pressure from me, and he has done it quite a few times, you know, him, Yuvraj (Singh), there have been instances where I've batted with Virat (Kohli). I've done that but got them, also. So, I feel what is really important to chase down targets is if one is acting slightly cold, the other one has to take over, and you have to run well between the wickets. That's the key factor. You can't always rely on the big shots. The reason being, yes, you get sixes and boundaries playing the big shot, but if you are batting at No. 6, you know there's no (specialist) batsman after you and that actually puts pressure on you.

"The top one, two or three, they can play their big shots because they know there are five batsmen behind them. But when you go in at six or seven, you have to think maybe three times before you play the big shot. That itself puts a lot of pressure on you, but I feel when there's a partnership going, two batsmen batting, I feel the key is for both of them to run well between the wickets and to make sure when they get the loose deliveries to get the most out of them. It's most preferred to be a boundary because there's less chances or less risks involved, and ultimately once you break the big into small targets, achieving them just keeps giving you confidence, maybe 10 or 12 runs or 15 runs, but you gain confidence out of every target that you achieve. Overall, you keep breaking it down and in turn put the pressure back on the opposition."

No purist could have put it better.