No vacant slot in top order batting: Dhoni

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Nagpur: Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni on Tuesday ruled out the possibility of batting up the order, saying there is no vacant slot for him in top four positions.

"It's a difficult choice to make. We have Viru (Virender Sehwag) and Sachin (Tendulkar) opening the innings, Gauti (Gautam Gambhir) at no. 3 and Yuvraj at no 4. The next slot available is no. 5," Dhoni said ahead of the second one-dayer against Australia here on Wednesday.

"I float at times and bat at different slots. More often than not we have a fixed batting line when it comes to these four guys playing the game. If there are more off spinners in the attack we may shift Yuvraj to no. 5 and we have done that. But to say I have to bat every time at no. 3 or 4 is difficult for me (to do)," he said.

Earlier in the day, former Australia wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist said that he would like to see Dhoni bat up the order, which would enable him to play as many overs as possible.

Dhoni also said that death bowling continues to remain a major concern for him and would like to see his bowlers conceding lesser runs in the final overs.

"It's been a worrying thing for us for the past few months. We had not been great with out death bowling. If you see the last game, the first few overs and 42nd over onwards - it was good and in the 50th we gave away one run", he said.

"In between there was a span of four overs when we gave away 50-52 runs. If we can bring that down good, say by two to five runs it can count at the end," the wicketkeeper batsman said.

The India skipper also said that he was not too concerned about injury scares of the visitors, who will miss James Hopes, Brett Lee and possibly Mitchell Johnson in Wednesday's encounter.

"When we came for the practice sessions, we had a few areas we needed to work on. We concentrated on that. We are quite specific with death bowling and new ball bowling. We are concentrating on areas that can affect us in a direct way.

"(Am) Not really worried about that (their injuries). They have a squad of 15," he said.