The frontline batsmen have to fire in unison, and not depend on the lower order, if India are to win Thursday's crucial fifth one-dayer against Australia, captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni said in Hyderabad.
"Top order batsmen need to bat well and not rely on lower order batsmen. If you are playing with seven batsmen, it's better to get a big score from six of them rather than using the seventh who we call as a backup batsman, especially when you are chasing," the Indian captain said.
"If one of the top-order batsmen gets a big score it becomes easy for us as others can rotate around him. If we have a good start we can get on to a big score so as to dictate terms and play according to your pace," said Dhoni at the match-eve press conference.
Dhoni had blamed his batsmen for India not being able to chase the modest target of 250 at Mohlai, which had helped Australia draw level 2-2 in the best-of-seven rubber.
Dhoni saw Ravindra Jadeja as a bowling all-rounder at number seven and he felt the youngster has done well so far.
"He's (Ravindra Jadeja) filling in the space of bowling all-rounder. He's bowling really well. He's batting also is important.
"Batting at number seven is not about getting big fifties or 70s. It's about scoring quickly. And if we are batting second and if we lose wickets every batsman is needed to score extra runs on the board," he explained.
Sachin Tendulkar has failed to score big so far in the series though he got the starts on a couple of matches, but Dhoni said the veteran batsman, just seven runs short of 17,000 ODI runs, should not be put under pressure.
"Whenever Sachin goes out to bat there are so much of expectations and responsibility. He's done it for 20 years.
Whenever he goes in we expect him to score big, but at the same time we don't want him to bat under pressure," he said.
With the series tantalisingly poised 2-2, Dhoni said every match was important for the outcome of the series.
"When it became 1-1, I said it's like a five-game series.
Now we can see it as a three-game series. Every game is important now. It's important not to have an off day. As the number of games gets reduced there's no time to recover. Every game, every hour is important for both the sides," he said.
While the Indian camp was upbeat that Gautam Gambhir had recovered fully from the neck injury he sustained in Delhi during the third ODI, there was a slight concern over pacer Ashish Nehra who had some cough, but Dhoni said it was "nothing serious".
"There are no big injuries as such," he said.
Dhoni said that though the Australian coach Tim Nielsen had complained about the hectic schedule, there was enough gap between the games for players to recover.
"There was a two-day gap between matches barring the one between the Delhi and Mohali games. It is enough to recover.
It's been evenly spaced," he said.
Dhoni said the Indians did not target any rival bowler but played according to how well each of them was bowling on a given day.
"They (Australia) don't have their experienced bowlers.
Brett Lee is also not there. They are missing quite a few.
Peter Siddle is one bowler who was in form and bowling well.
But it's not about targeting a bowler. We have to see which bowler is bowling well and do accordingly," he said.
"For us it's more about what we can do and achieve rather than target a bowler," he added.
Overall Dhoni expressed his happiness with his bowling attack.
"The last couple of games Harbhajan (Singh) had bowled really well. (I) can't complain much. He's come back into rhythm and is bowling in right areas. The (new ball) bowlers have got off to a good start always. If they have not got the wickets, we have been able to contain them (Australia)," he said.
Singling out Nehra for praise, he also gave accolades to Praveen Kumar while admitting Ishant Sharma had a mixed bag to show for.
"Ashish has been the pick. Praveen has also done well.
Ishant had a couple of off games for him in four games he has played. He's done well in a couple of them. Last game, he got targeted a bit. I'm quite happy with the performance of the bowlers overall," he said.
