Dhoni blames spinners' poor performance for Perth defeat

Indian ODI skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni on Tuesday admitted that his spinners failed to perform at their absolute best which led to his side's five-wicket defeat against Australia in the opening match of the series here at the WACA cricket ground.

Lavishing praise on the hosts, the 34-year-old said that the world champions batted extremely well and that they turned the things around by the end of the match.

"They batted really well. They played a few big shots but other than that I felt that was a time when they rotated extremely well. They were still getting more than six runs in an over and I felt that was an area when there was a lot of pressure on us, because the spinners also went for quite a few boundaries. So, I felt that was a phase where we could have bowled slightly differently may be. But other than that if you see our fast bowlers bowled well and gave us a very good start. I feel the spinners could have done better when it comes to bowling," Dhoni told the media after the match.

Dhoni, however, said that the fast bowlers did a great job and it was spinners who could have bowled much better by avoiding easy boundary deliveries.

Expressing his views on not using Decision Review System (DRS), the skipper believes that there should not be umpires' decision justification system but instead there should be umpires taking right decision.

"We have to push the umpires to take the right decision and you have to see how many 50-50 decision doesn't go in our favour and it always happen. I am still not convinced about DRS," he said.

"There is quite a few deviation in DRS. Even the makers agree that there is a bit of deviation that can happen. You have to also take into account weather to give not out or out. So DRS should not be umpires decision justification system. It should be giving the right decision," he added.

Dhoni also hailed debutant fast bowler Barinder Sran for bagging three wickets of David Warner, Aaron Finch and Steve Smith.

"Bari bowled really well. He was hitting the right areas which I feel is important. Also, being the left arm bowler, I think he has a slight advantage of the angle that goes away from the right hander batsmen. So, I felt overall he bowled really well."

Meanwhile, Australian batsman George Bailey, who made a significant contribution in the run-chase, scoring brilliant 112 off 120 balls, said that they were confident of chasing down the target knowing the fact that they had big hitters in the line-up.

"Yes we have seen that at the WACA over the number of years it was going to be challenging score but we talked about going deep knowing the big hitters we had in the shade. We would have not got worried even if the run rate had got up to eight or nine runs per over. We managed to get into a very nice rhythm," Bailey told.

He also said that although India set up a really good target, the hosts were confident that they would chase it down knowing the fact that a lot of runs could be scored in the later part of the innings at the WACA.

Earlier, skipper Smith smashed 11 boundaries and two sixes as he scored 149 runs in his side's chase of 310 and, thereby, helped his side to seal the victory.

Smith was also adjudged man of the match for his brilliant knock.

India will now lock horns with Australia in the second ODI in Brisbane on Friday.