MS Dhoni has a habit of taking games into the last over, but the strategy didn’t pay off the desired dividend on Sunday as India succumbed to an embarrassing 11-run loss against West Indies.
The batters were uncannily slow which made the meager target of 190 look like an uphill task. The former skipper, who came in to bat in the 13th over after the dismissal of Dinesh Karthik, reached his fifty in the 46th over after facing 108 deliveries. Let that sink in… Dhoni scored an ODI fifty in 108 deliveries!
The innings, which was impacted by the two paced nature of the pitch and the constant fall of wickets, is the slowest ODI fifty scored by an Indian in 16 years. Dhoni ended with 53 off 114 deliveries – this is also his slowest fifty, beating his 88-ball half-century against Pakistan at the Eden Gardens in 2013.
Former batsman Sadagoppan Ramesh holds the record of the slowest ODI fifty ever by an Indian cricketer – he took 117 deliveries to reach to the 50-run mark against Kenya in 1999. Former skipper Sourav Ganguly is third on the list with his 105-ball fifty against Sri Lanka in 2005.
Feature image: AFP