Promotion to No.4 worked well: Dhawan

CHENNAI: The MRC ‘A’ outstation players – Rishi Dhawan and Harsh Dubey – never looked out of place on Thursday, outplaying Vijay CC on the opening day of the Rajah of Palayampatti Shield final at the MA Chidambaram Stadium here.

Dhawan and Dubey, who posted identical scores of 116, amassed a massive 219 runs for the fourth-wicket partnership that sucked the life out of the Vijay bowlers. The Dhawan-Dubey alliance combined with good work by NS Chaturved (132) and B Anirudh Sitaram (83) propelled MRC ‘A’ to a monumental 484 for five at close of play.

After a field day, in which he struck 13 fours and two maximums, Dhawan said that the promotion to No.4 worked wonders for both himself and his team.

“The wicket was good. [In the previous matches], I could not score a lot of runs because I batted down the order. I got the opportunity to bat up the order (in the final), so I tried to grab it. I wanted to make a sedate start. After assessing the pitch, I kept on playing my shots,” Dhawan, who had led Himachal Pradesh to glory in the Vijay Hazare Trophy (50 overs) last December, told DT Next.

Talking about his influential partnership with Vidarbha teenager Dubey, Dhawan said: “He is a talented, young boy. We just discussed about batting long; the team demanded we play for a long duration. The left-right combination was very important as we were up against two left-arm spinners (Rahil Shah and R Sai Kishore). The pitch was a little bit on the slower side, so we rotated the strike well and waited to punish the bad balls.”

On his part, the 19-year-old Dubey, who was elevated to No.5, said: “I had played lower down the order [in the last few matches]. It (his batting position) depends on the [match] situation. The ball came on to the bat, but spun a bit. It (484) is a big and very good score; it (Vijay) has to chase it down [to win the final]. The match is in our hands; we need to bowl in the right areas [on the second and last day].”

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