CricDigs Blogs

MS Dhoni or Mahi as he is popularly called is excelling at the art handling the Indian team. I personally believe in what Sunny Gavaskar had once commented – captainship is all about man management and isn’t about being the greatest or the most gifted player in the side. In our case, this stands absolutely correct. Just look at our history of captains, Tendulkar and Dravid are perhaps the greatest Indian batsmen of this generation but who has excelled at being the captain? First it was Ganguly and now Dhoni. Both of them weren’t looked upon as captain-material even when playing at the state level and certainly don’t have the prettiest of batting techniques. Both of them aren’t in the same class as that of Tendulkar, but while the little Master’s stint as a captain was miserable, Dhoni, like Ganguly, is having a great time. Reason?
He is an expert at using his available resources.

There have been many examples in the past few days about Dhoni’s skills at keeping his team together and getting the best out of them. He has been instrumental in getting Sehewag’s confidence back. Yuvi certainly has reacted very well to Dhoni being in-charge. On the other hand, the perennial under-achiever — Zaheer Khan, has come to the fore under Dhoni’s watchful eyes. In the fourth one-dayer against England, the Indian captain wasn’t very sure about the bowling areas that should be picked up by his pacemen or how to thwart the rampaging Owais Shah. Faced with a difficult situation, Dhoni did exactly what he is best doing is at — he dug into his available eleven players to find the person who could solve his query.

He immediately put Zaheer in-charge of the situation, making him even set the field placings for Ishant and company. Zaheer has reacted very positively to his role of being the senior bowler in the team and such gestures by the captain would only engage Zaheer’s attention in a more positive way. Again, Dhoni was very clear that he didn’t want Amit Mishra — India’s latest bowling discovery to be exposed to the English batsmen on placid Indian pitches. He foresees Mishra as a force with a number of test matches coming up and doesn’t want to take any chances to spoil the young man’s confidence. During the game at Bangalore, Gambhir was finding it hard to catch the wet, slippery ball. Once he did manage to take a catch, it was Dhoni who threw his keeping gloves at Gambhir — the message was clear, he understood Gambhir’s predicament with holding on to the wet ball but made it clear, though in a light-hearted manner, that the team couldn’t afford missed chances.