Indian pacer Shardul Thakur revealed how his ex-India teammate and CSK skipper helped him improve his batting and start regularly contributing for the national team with his secondary skill as well.
“Once I was in Mahi bhai’s (Mahendra Singh Dhoni) room and holding his bat. He told me that my batting grip is too high and I need to hold it lower to get better control over the shot. Now I hold my bat there and it helps,”
said the 29-year-old, who has played 4 Tests, 15 ODIs and 22 T20Is for India and is a regular feature for CSK under Dhoni.
During the interview, Thakur also credited India’s throwdown specialists D Raghavendra, also known as ‘Raghu’, and Nuwan Seneviratne for his success as they’ve helped him improve his footwork against express pace in the nets.
Thakur then thanked the Indian team management, skipper Virat Kohli, opening batsman and fellow Mumbaikar, Rohit Sharma, for their invaluable guidance and support.
While Thakur has made useful runs in limited-overs cricket, his batting contributions in Tests have made a real impact. The aggressive right-hander struck an important 67 and stitched a game-changing partnership with Washington Sundar in the series decider against Australia in Brisbane earlier this year.
He helped India keep themselves in the contest in the fourth Test in England at The Oval recently by scoring a counter-attacking 57 off 36 balls in his team’s first-innings total of 191. Thakur backed it up with a solid second-innings 60 off 72 balls as the tourists went on to achieve victory by 157 runs.
