To start with my argument, I would like to mention that MS Dhoni under his banner of captaincy has not only made the team win the 2011 World Cup, but also Border-Gavaskar Trophy in 2008 and 2010 against Australia.
It may be great to point out that while Ganguly was at his height’s and led the team, though he may have been a good individual scorer, he wasn’t a team ‘with-holder’. Ganguly not only was aggressive on the field but also was a key catalyst to take down India to a much stooped level (No offense though), on the other hand Dhoni has always maintained his cool and no wonder a synonym to his name is the “Cool Captain”.
Also his temperament shows both off field and on field. Dhoni has been the recipient of many awards, such as the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award and the Padma Shri, the readers may also note that he was acclaimed as the ‘ICC ODI Player of the year’ in the year 2008 and 2009.
Also according to some SportsPro magazine, Dhoni is 10th most valuable brand in field of sports worldwide and number 1 among all Asian superstars. Even after all the stats and figures, I don’t find any reason as to why would the rumour mills won’t stop!!
However, I do realize the fact that statistics may not get good players, but Dhoni even in the recent tri-series match has quite significantly proved it that he can perform decent enough even though bearing the fact that he had a ‘team-ly’ pressure on him and not to forget, he also handled gigantic criticism.
I personally don’t feel that the rotational policy was that bad a task, and plus aren’t we all entitled to our opinions? Yes the senior members weren’t playing too well; they looked much like out of shape, so a call was taken right? Not that they had been thrown away?
Finally I would like to say that this man could prove to be a mile stone in the history of Indian cricket and if there is anyone who could tame and excavate the best out of the team, it is just Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
Paresh Chandra Das is doctor by profession and an avid cricket lover
