Sarkar's catch was a fluke but important: Dhoni

Melbourne, March 19 (IANS) An ecstatic Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni on Thursday said his diving catch to remove Bangladesh batsman Soumya Sarkar in the quarter-final of the cricket World Cup was a fluke as the ball had stuck to his gloves.

"Fluke happens. It was an important catch, a decent partnership was going and I just dived. I thought it was a bit away from me, but I still dived and the ball came and sat in my hands," Dhoni said at the post-match presentation ceremony.

Bangladesh were rebuilding their innings with Sarkar and all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan out in the middle, having lost three quick wickets at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).

They had put on 17 runs together before India’s pace spearhead Mohammed Shami bowled a cross-seam bouncer to Sarkar. The left-handed batsman only managed to run it off the bat’s face into the gloves of a diving Dhoni who pulled it off one-handed.

Asked about making it to the semi-finals of the quadrennial event, Dhoni said, "It has been good, we can't shy away from the fact that we are playing some good cricket. But at the same time a month back we were struggling.”

“A lot of credit needs to go to the boys and the support staff. The good thing is not many players from our side are in the top run-scorers list, but the batting has performed.“

The skipper who had his 100th One-Day-International (ODI) win, added they wanted to improve the team’s skill set of bowling the opposition out which has now happened seven times in a row.

“That was an area we wanted to improve (bowling teams out). Even in New Zealand and South Africa, we were struggling with that, but now we are doing much better. It's difficult to pinpoint how it changed.

“We need to do a lot of the small things right. Put in the intensity and hope it all turns out well,” added Dhoni.