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Mahendra Singh Dhoni loves players who can take challenges head on. That's the reason Ravichandran Ashwin, his trusted lieutenant, is his stand-out performer from the Indian team in the ongoing ICC World Cup.
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"The spinners have really bowled well. As far as Ashwin is concerned, obviously, he's someone that I always love to have, the reason being I always pushed him to bowl in the powerplays and even have used him whenever I'm in difficult situations.
"So he is really confident about his bowling. He understands his bowling well," said Dhoni about his leading spinner, who has taken 11 wickets in five games so far.
"I believe he (Ashwin) has learned a lot in the last few foreign tours. The good thing with him is that he keeps improving himself. Every time he's part of the series, he sees the challenges and accordingly he improves. So it's obviously good to have him, and it's good to see him bowl really well," the skipper, who seemed really happy about his Chennai Super Kings colleague, said after India demolished Ireland by eight wickets to seal the top spot in Pool B.
Ashwin's finished the match with two wickets for 38 runs from ten overs, including a maiden. More importantly, he conceded just 19 runs and claimed a wicket in his first spell of eight overs.
Asked about how motivated the team will be facing Zimbabwe in an inconsequential game, he replied: "We're highly motivated. If it comes to the points, we have qualified for the next stage, but still, it was a challenge in itself because the travelling issue that we had. A lot of boys didn't get enough sleep before this game because of the time we landed and the travelling that we have to do and all of that.
"So every game pushes you to do something special, and I felt we did really well on the field. Same way the next game will be the last before we get into the knock-out stages, so we'll like to keep improving every game.
"That's our motive to keep improving in every game so that we can maintain the forward shift that we have got."