We stepped up intensity today: Dhoni

Chennai, Feb 16 (PTI) Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoniexpressed happiness that his side stepped up the intensity inthe second warm-up game today and praised the team for thecollective effort to crush New Zealand by 117 runs.

"In the first game (against Australia on February 12), wewere not with intensity. Since this was the last game beforethe World Cup we wanted the intensity to be there," Dhoni saidafter India''s second and final World Cup warm-up match.

"Last time also, we won two games quite convincingly.

What is more important is to get the most out of the game.

The batsmen did a good job. Gautam Gambhir batted well alongwith Virat Kohli and they provided the platform for the bighitters to come and look to play their shots later on," hesaid.

"This was one of the wickets difficult to rotate thestrike. But when you look to slog the bowler it was easy toclear the field because the ball was stopping on and it wasthere to hit. Overall it was a very good effort. Spinnersagain bowled very well. Seamers also to some extent did theirjob," he added.

On the composition of the team for the World Cup, Dhonisaid it will depend on the conditions and the pitch.

"Going with extra seamer or spinner will be decided basedon our assessment of the wicket. This being a practice game wecould try all of them. We were able to test all spinners. Allof them did well along with Yuvraj Singh. That gives usoptions.

"Right from Dambulla series, we never had the platform toslog. This was one game after a long time we got a good startcapitalised on it and later on slogged. We should look to geta good platform from where batsmen can launch. Good startswill be crucial for us," he said.

Ross Taylor, who captained the new Zealand side today inthe absence of Daniel Vettori, agreed that chasing such a bigtarget (of 361) was always a tough job.

"Our spinners are not known as big turners. We yieldedbig runs to the Indians to pile up 360. When you are chasingseven or eight a over, it is always tough for the boys. But weneed to find the ways to score runs quickly and also find theboundary options.

"Hopefully, we can improved our performance in the WorldCup. When chasing that big a total, you could hit balls forsingles and twos, you got to get runs by boundaries. You needto do that otherwise you get eliminated," he said.

On the positives ahead of the World Cup, Taylor said,"Sometime we go well. Today we gave too many runs on thiswicket. We were playing second innings for first time in thetwo warm-up matches. We had a good start by both Brendon(McCullum) and Martin (Guptill) but we need to get more for agood start. We need to do that quite often to get big totals."MORE PTI VS RE PDS