Hailing opener Shikhar Dhawan's match-winning century against South Africa, India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni said the left-hander played smart by staying at the crease even after getting his hundred.
Dhoni liked the manner in which Dhawan, who struck 137 in India's challenging total of 307, planned his innings.
"Today, he was really batting the way he bats. When he needed to play the big shots, he did play, and he was also rotating the strike. He made sure that once he got his hundred, he was still there at the crease," Dhoni said after India's impressive 130-run win.
"It's important if you get a hundred and you are able to score 130 or 140 runs, you always see the team getting those extra 20 or 25 runs. So it was good on his part to make sure he stays until the end because the general tendency at times is for the openers is to after the 25th over they like to play the big shots. They think their job is over. But I think in these conditions, once you are set you have to make the most of it," Dhoni said.
The captain also acknowledged Dhawan's hard work during the training sessions.
"Shikhar batted really well. He was putting in effort in the net sessions, and as I said, a lot of times people talk about form, but form is something that nobody can see like that. It's just a matter of 15-20 minutes, and maybe it was something that he spent in the last game, that 20 minutes of initial batting that really helped him," Dhoni said as he was generous in his praise for his colleague.
The skipper is happy that the team has found some momentum after back-to-back wins.
"The kind of wins that we have had in the last two games, it's tough to get, so definitely both the games were important for us. The way we played in this game, also -- last game I said it was a complete batting performance, but this game also I felt we did really well with the batting. We tried something different.
"Last few overs, we actually went for those big shots irrespective of wickets falling. We actually wanted to see how much we can push, so even though Raina got out, it was Jadeja, who went for his runs and ultimately Shami and Ashwin batting in the end and getting past 300 runs, which was fantastic. It was definitely a par-plus score on this wicket, and when we turned up with the ball, I think we bowled in the right areas and we made it tough for the opposition to score.
