India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has defended his team's suffocating bowling plans in the first innings of the fourth Test, saying more aggressive batting and not new laws were required to counter the tactic. Former Australia skipper Ian Chappell called for cricket administrators to consider changing the fielding laws after India stacked the offside with eight fieldsmen and persistently bowled wide of off stump Saturday, stifling Australia's scoring options. Australia scored just 166 runs on the third day of the fourth Test - including 42 before lunch and 49 in the second session - in the face of the ultra-defensive bowling. The hosts also used the method briefly but unsuccessfully in the nine balls Australia faced in its second innings Sunday before early stumps, with the tourists getting 13 runs to erode part of the 382-run winning target. “There have been strategies that are not liked by opposing captains and all those things,” Dhoni said Sunday. “What we wanted to do is go out there and look to win games.” Chappell, an aggressive batsman and captain in the 1960s and 70s, said it was “not the sort of cricket I like to see. “Administrators have got to think about suggesting that perhaps no more than two-thirds of the fielders can be on one side of the wicket,” he told Cricinfo. “It really isn't a lot of fun watching the bowlers bowling well wide of the stumps and batsmen putting their bats on their shoulders.” Australia needs to score at about four runs per over on the final day to achieve a series-tying victory, so could face more of the same Monday, but Dhoni said the onus is on Australia's batsmen to force the issue. “Of course, they could have done something different if we were bowling far from their off-stump,” Dhoni said. – Agencies __
