When the inaugural T20 World Championship was to be played, no one gave India even a slender chance of winning the Championship. Some of the better-known names were, missing from the Indian squad and Mahendra Singh Pansingh Dhoni was made the scapegoat captain to lead a team that would not lose face even if it returned without a single victory. What happened finally is history but above all it brought into limelight a new potential captain for the Indian cricket team.
Dhoni was no Samson with all his strength in his long hair but a captain who remained cool as a cucumber even under the most stressful situation. It was only a matter of time before M.S. Dhoni would be handed the reins of India cricket to be in the safest of hands. Dhoni appeared at the international arena in December 2004 when he made his One Day International debut against Bangladesh.
Perhaps the month of December had a special significance in Dhoni’s career; he made his test debut against Sri Lanka in December 2005 and the following December, his T20 debut against South Africa.
Dhoni draws his ancestry from the District of Almora in Uttarakhand but was born in Ranchi, then in the State of Bihar and now in Jharkhand, the district to which his father moved for employment. Since the Bihar youth teams of various age groups were not all that strong, Dhoni had to put outstanding individual performances to remain in the limelight. However, once in the Indian team, he remained an invaluable asset for the team in all the three forms of the game and once the leader, his achievements remained unparalleled.
In 90 Tests, Dhoni known lovingly as Mahi scored nearly 5,000 runs at an average of a fraction over 38 but it was his efficiency behind the stumps that accounted for the 256 catches 38 stumpings. However, Mahi’s achievements in the shorter version of the game remain enviable. In 350 ODIs, he scored 10,773 runs at an average of 50.53 with a highest score of 183 not out and a record number of victims behind the stumps; 321 catches and the number of stumpings with the integers reversed standing at 123; a total of 444 victims. In 98 T20 Internationals, Dhoni scored 1,617 runs at an average of 37.60 and accounted for 91 victims behind the stumps in the form of 54 catches and 37 stumpings.
However, what puts Dhoni in a class of his own are his achievements as a captain. He remains the only captain who led his team in winning all the three limited overs ICC trophies; the ICC World T20 in 2007, the ICC World Cup in 2011 and the ICC Champions Trophy, in 2013. In addition, he led the Indian team to victory in the Asia Cup in 2010 and again in 2016. Under his captaincy, India also achieved the distinction of achieving the top test ranking. There can be no greater recognition of Dhoni’s leadership than fact that the record eight times he was included in the ICC’s ODI XI, he was named as the captain on five occasions.
Dhoni has been considered as one of the greatest finishers in limited overs cricket and his 82 unbeaten innings are a testimony to his rare talent, however, when the time has demanded he was always ready to lead from the front and the most outstanding instance was when he decided to open the innings in the final of the 2011 ICC World Cup. One rare unique behaviour that Dhoni introduced was to hand over the won trophy to the junior-most member of the team once he was back with the team after receiving the trophy. Nothing can be more motivating for any youngster in a team where Dhoni was the skipper.
As a leader of the Chennai Super Kings team in the IPL, Dhoni’s achievement is another example of his great leadership. Of the ten times that CSK has participated in the 12 IPL tournaments so far, Dhoni has led his team into seven finals, winning the title on three occasions.
M.S. has been a recipient of several awards, some of the more prestigious being the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan. The Territorial Army conferred the honourary rank of Lieutenant Colonel and he justified the honour by undertaking a two-week training stint with his unit.
Dhoni’s retirement and abdications have come in stages but the respect that he wielded among his teammates was always evident when the man behind the stumps took the liberty of resetting the field and it was never contested even when someone else was at the helm of affairs. I hope that the Government of India will hold a similar view when it comes to awards and honours for achievements that hitherto have never been reached by any other captain in bringing glory to the Indian cricket team.
Dhoni’s retirement from international cricket may be a disappointment for many of his fans but we all have definitely not seen the last of M.S. Dhoni. The number 7 in yellow jersey will still be seen playing the helicopter shot for the CSK in the IPL and the team’s opponent batsmen will still not dare to venture out of their batting crease as long as the man behind the stumps is the one who has the world’s maximum number of stumpings in limited overs cricket.
Credit : Gp Capt Achchyut Kumar (Teenager Today)
Picture Credit : Google