India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni Saturday rubbished media reports of rift in the dressing room but admitted that the turn of events in the past week caused uneasiness among the players.”If you listen to the press conference on tape, you would get the answer yourself as to what actually I said and what I meant. You can’t particularly see the same question, it might be a build up to the first question and often what we don’t answer, because of the first part of the question we answer, it actually is the answer to the second or third question,” said Dhoni.
Dhoni, however, admitted that he felt awkward when the reports came out.
“You feel a little awkward initially. You may sometimes think the person is actually believing (what’s been reported). And the second person thinks maybe he said it. But once you go through the talks, it gets back to as it was. It doesn’t even by 10 per cent affect our performance or has any effect in the dressing room,” he said.
Dhoni also defended Sehwag’s comments that he didn’t need to clarify that the seniors were slow in the field.
“He’s right, why should he have a chat? If there’s nothing, why we need to have a chat? When we don’t have a problem, why we need to solve it? There’s nothing negative in it. He is a senior player. We don’t need to clarify. We all have belief in each other as to what was said and what happened. It’s not the first time it has happened. The best thing is to get the most out of it. And what’s the most important is to have fun,” said Dhoni.
Dhoni said the atmosphere in the dressing room has been healthy.
“It’s always been there. It’s not this series or the previous one. It’s been perfect. It’s talk of the dressing room, we try and take positive out of it,” he said.
The rift appeared in the dressing room after Dhoni sparked a debate in the media by saying that the team management introduced a rotation policy for the top three — Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir — because they are slow fielders and were costing the team 20 runs in the One-day games.
Sehwag hit back at a press conference, saying the seniors were never told by the captain that they were slow fielders. Gambhir had also criticised Dhoni for not finishing matches quickly but the India captain said it was a matter of perception.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had to step in and board secretary Sanjay Jagdale asked chief coach Duncan Fletcher to act as a mediator and sort out the issue.