After salvaging a draw against Australia, India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni today expressed satisfaction with his team's performance in the third cricket Test, which eventually turned out to be his last match in the longer format following his shocking retirement.
Australia had finished their second innings at 318/9 at lunch to set India an improbable target of 384 runs, out of which the visitors scored 174-6 with Dhoni himself holding the fort at stumps.
With the third Test ending in a draw, India slumped to another Test series loss abroad as Australia regained the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
After the match, Dhoni announced his retirement from Test cricket with immediate effect but the 33-year-old did not give any hints of his impending decision when he had come to address the press conference.
Talking about the match, Dhoni said: "As a team, you want to win Tests. You look for a win, then a draw and then you fight it out so that you don't lose the Test match. Our second innings bowling was very good but somehow we find ourselves in trouble and this match also we gave a lead of 60-plus runs.
"Their lower order contributed again and they had enough score to defend. It was very tough to score over 300 runs on this kind of wicket in one day. But overall I am quite happy. We lost early wickets. We like to test ourselves in such situations and we put pressure on ourselves, and there wasn't enough pressure on Australia. Overall it was a good performance by the team," he added.
India struggled after tea when they lost Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara in one passage of play, but then Dhoni and R Ashwin played out the last hour without too much fuss as the players shook hands with four overs remaining in the day.
