MS Dhoni coming up the order in Asia Cup final was Harbhajan Singh’s idea

The feisty off-spinner Harbhajan Singh had other ideas, as he asked the Dhoni to go and have a shot himself.

Team India are on a high at the moment. With 10 wins in their last 11 outings, they are a team to beat getting into the T20 World Cup. Unlike most of the other teams, which are struggling to put up a settled unit in their first match, India are a well-oiled machine with not just a settled playing XI, but also sound reserve strength.

One such player — who is a legend in himself but is forced to be out of the playing XI due to the presence of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja — Harbhajan Singh is extremely crucial to team’s plans and is very much in the mix. He is one player who contributes even when he is not playing, and he gave ample account of it during the recently concluded Asia Cup T20 final.

Chasing a tricky 121 in 15 overs, India lost eventual Man-of-the-Match Shikhar Dhawan needing another 22 from 14 balls. The choices MS Dhoni had to send in were Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh, Hardik Pandya and himself. But with Raina and Yuvraj looking a bit shaky at the start of their innings, he thought of sending in the big-hitting Pandya and sought senior player Harbhajan’s opinion.

The feisty off-spinner though had other ideas, as he asked the skipper to go and have a shot himself. “Dhoni asked me if Hardik Pandya should go in, to which I said no, you are best finisher in the world and you should go. These are the little things I share with the teammates,” Harbhajan revealed during an open media session in Kolkata ahead of the World T20.

Going by his senior colleague’s suggestion, Dhoni walked in at a crunch situation and made it look like a cakewalk with his unbeaten 6-ball 20 as India won by eight wickets with seven balls to spare. The Indian skipper was coming into the game on the back of an unwarranted photoshop-act by a Bangladeshi fan that went viral and created a tensed atmosphere among the fans on social space.  But the captain chose undoubtedly the best way to shut all the negativity out by letting his bat do the talking.