Captain's Corner: MS Dhoni vs Ricky Ponting

#4. Home Record

India became a near-invincible team at home under Dhoni’s leadership

Under Dhoni’s leadership, India were nearly invincible at home. This is an aspect where he has bettered the likes of Sourav Ganguly and Mohammad Azharuddin. Australia have also been pretty impressive with Ponting at the helm for so many years.

Test Captaincy Record at Home

	Span	Matches Captained	Won	Lost	Drawn	Win Percentage
Dhoni	2008-2013	30	21	3	6	70%
Ponting	2004-2010	39	29	5	5	74.36%

Both players have been brilliant skippers at home as seen by the numbers. Ponting edges out Dhoni in this one because even if we take Ponting’s first 30 Tests as captain, he won 24 of them which makes his win percentage 80% compared to Dhoni’s 70%.

ODI Captaincy Record at Home

	Span	Matches Captained	Won	Lost	Tied	NR	Win Percentage
Dhoni	2007-2016	73	43	26	1	3	58.90
Ponting	2002-2012	89	61	22	0	6	68.54%

Ponting once again gets the better of Dhoni on this one, having won nearly 69% of all his ODI matches as captain at home compared to MSD’s 58.9%.

T20I Captaincy Record at Home

	Span	Matches Captained	Won	Lost	Tied	NR	Win Percentage
Dhoni	2007-2016	20	10	10	0	0	50%
Ponting	2006-2009	4	4	0	0	0	100%

Since Ponting has captained only 1/5th of the number of matches that Dhoni has led at home, it is not totally fair to judge both players. However, MS Dhoni won two out of first four T20Is as captain at home while Ricky Ponting has led Australia to victory in all of his four games as T20I captain at their home turf.