Concerned over the continuously dipping standard of their fielding, Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni urged his teammates not to spill at least the sitters when they clash with Sri Lanka in the second ODI in Nagpur on Friday.
The butter-fingered Indian fielders have put up a messy show in the last few international matches and Dhoni said it was time for improvement.
"At international level we were fielding well in patches and not dropping catches. You may drop the odd difficult catch but straightforward chances need to be taken. In the last three-four games we have dropped a lot of regulation catches. Of course it is a botheration," Dhoni said.
"At the same time it will be solved at some point of time because of the effort that we are putting in. We are hoping we don't drop catches in this game," the captain added.
Dhoni was though happy with the way Indian pace bowlers performed in tense moments of the thrilling first one-dayer.
"It was one of the best in the past one year. I have always said we had not been very consistent with the death bowling. In the last game, in the last five overs we gave away only 27 runs. It was a very good effort.
"Ashish (Nehra) bowled five overs in a row. There was a bit of reverse swing going which actually helped us a bit. Overall in the last game the death bowling was fantastic," he said.
As many as 825 runs were scored in that thriller at the Madhavrao Scindia stadium, with Sri Lanka making a terrific chase before falling short by just three runs.
Dhoni said that on superb batting tracks like at Rajkot, the key is to stop singles.
"Normally you don't get wickets like that. It was not a big ground with the straight boundary not more than 60-65 yards. Since the wicket was so nice it was easy for the batsmen to clear the field. It's important not to give easy singles as you see even after scoring 400 runs we won by only three or four runs," he said.
Dhoni backed curators for preparing batting-friendly tracks, saying it was easy to criticise wicket preparation which was not a mean task.
"Wickets are not easy to prepare. You try to get a good wicket and it turns out to be a flat one. The Kanpur Test the wicket was flat but still the game ended one and a half days' before schedule.
"In the last four games the wickets have been consistent and batter-friendly. It's easy to criticise preparation of wickets," he said.
Dhoni felt that wicket here would have bounce and the dew factor would not make a big impact.
"In the last T20 game here there was good bounce. The wicket for the match looks like a good, flat wicket. I had a conversation with the curator", he said. PTI
