England’s stand-in skipper Jos Buttler showered rich praise on Sam Curran for his valiant 83-ball 95* in the third ODI against India in Pune on Sunday (March 28).
According to Buttler, there were shades of the ‘great finisher’ MS Dhoni in Curran’s knock that went in vain as the hosts won the decider by 7 runs to clinch the ODI series 2-1.
Chasing 330 to win, England were reeling at 200/7 at one stage before Curran turned the match on its head with a fabulous knock. He added 57 runs for the 8th wicket with Adil Rashid (19) and followed it with a 60-run stand with Mark Wood (14).
Needing 14 runs in the final over, Wood got run out on the first delivery while T Natarajan conceded only 6 runs to restrict the visitors to 322/9 in 50 overs.
With the fast-approaching IPL 2021, Buttler believes Curran, who is the part of Dhoni-led Chennai Super Kings (CSK) squad, will have a great opportunity to talk to the former India captain.
“I’m sure Sam would want to talk to MS about tonight’s innings,” Buttler said at the virtual post-match news conference.
“I’m sure there were shades of the way that he (MS Dhoni) would have liked to take the game down if he was in that situation. He’s a great person for Sam to have a conversation with when he meets up MS (in the IPL).”
England all-rounder Moeen Ali will also turn up for CSK in the 14th edition of Indian Premier League.
“We know what an amazing cricketer, finisher MS Dhoni is. A brilliant learning curve for all our players to share dressing rooms with guys like MS’ stature in the game. I’m very excited for them.”
England had overhauled the target of 337 in 43.3 overs in the second ODI and Buttler felt 330-target was manageable but they never had any partnership going.
“We were happy to chase that score. We thought that was a manageable score, but we lost wickets at regular intervals and never got those partnerships together. Never thought run-rate would be a big issue but we lost wickets,” Buttler said.
“Small, small things could have done better. I think with the ball we were not quite as disciplined as we have been early on.
“We gave them a few too many easy boundary balls. They didn’t have to work too hard for those boundaries, but then we pegged back pretty well with spinners picking up those wickets,” he added.
(With PTI inputs)
