Is Dhoni’s way the winning way?

In the news recently was Dhoni’s completion of a half decade as captain of India. The press went gaga over his achievements over the past 5 years and also handed him a few brickbats for the recent debacles in England and Australia. They were full of praise for the man, for his outstanding leadership which saw India lift the ODI and T20 World Cups. To add to it, he is the best keeper (in terms of numbers) that India has produced over its entire history. He richly deserves all that and much more!

Almost all the articles in print and over the internet preferred to speak about his on field performances – his innovative batting style, cool demeanor, his insistence to take matches to the wire and many of his extra risky decisions, the most famous of them being giving the final over of the 2007 T20 WC final to a naïve and unheard ‘Joginder Sharma’. As part of this article, I would like to concentrate purely on two of Dhoni’s off-the-field opinions, one which I believe can be a serious impediment to Indian cricket while the other may stunt the growth of cricket in general.

I will start with the most recent one – his request to produce spinning tracks for home tests to supposedly get a ‘home advantage’. He reiterated this in Aug 2012 by taking a dig at the curator of Chinnaswamy stadium, Bangalore for not producing a suitable pitch for the final India-New Zealand Test (which was done and over within 4 days and the spinners, ironically, grabbed 13 out of 20 wickets).

I can understand where he’s coming from. After losing 8 test matches in a row abroad, he would certainly like to win a few at home. But is it the right approach?

Not quite! There are many pitfalls in this approach.

Firstly, it’s a short term strategy. We may win at home but what about the overseas series? We need to be better prepared for them or else we would back to square one (to the pre-Ganguly era). Remember tigers at home and lambs abroad (getting slaughtered with bounce and pace)?

Secondly, the use of spinning tracks would only accentuate our current fast bowling woes. India’s perennial search for a genuine fast bowler is an age old fact. Our sub continental neighbors, though, don’t seem to have any such problems. For every Akram or Waqar there comes a Gul and Tanveer. For an outgoing Vaas there is a Malinga. Even Afganistan has a Shapoor Zadran. We cannot expect to groom pacers just by making them bowl at the MRF Pace Foundation and leave the test matches for Ashwin and Ojha to win it for us.

Thirdly, we need to avoid this for the sake of our cricket fans. The current IPL fan is fickle and is not attracted to test cricket often. Half full stands in recent test matches are a testimony to that. We need to bring in more people to the stadium to watch the game, especially kids. Inviting test playing nations, handing them rank turners and massacring them within three days do not make good television viewing, forget watching live.

And finally, seeing the current performances of Ross Taylor (Ind vs NZ series), Dale Steyn, Shane Watson on sub continental wickets (in the recent T20 World Cup), we must also note the fact that Indian pitches are fast losing their mystery element. Thanks to the IPL, someone like a James Franklin knows the behavior of the Wankhede pitch as if it were a Wellington wicket.

Yes, we must have the home advantage, but producing dustbowls is not the solution. We need sporting wickets – one that starts spinning on Day 3 or 4, albeit ensuring the bounce remains consistent throughout the duration. The Bangalore wicket I was referring earlier is a perfect example of such pitches. The trick is to make matches more watchable by creating wickets that give both teams a fair chance to win.

My next concern is about Dhoni’s refusal to accept the Decision Review System (DRS) in its current state (not sure if it is his own views or the BCCI’s views that he is endorsing. On either counts, it is the wrong approach).

Dhoni has rejected the current DRS stating that it is not perfect and he will use it only if the technology improves. By that argument we should not have on-field umpires and third umpires also. Even they are not perfect and can produce howlers! ICC claims that umpiring errors have reduced in games using DRS. Even if we try and ignore the statistics put forth by ICC in favour of DRS, to the general viewers eye it is pretty clear that DRS is definitely not worse than the current umpiring standards.

The point is, if we can live with much lesser (or even same amount of errors) then what is the harm in taking the option?

DRS is not perfect today and it will never become one if not given a chance! No system can improve by simulating its performance in labs or using it in a few handful of games. DRS will become perfect by facing real time scenarios, as is the case with all technologies. Software technologies have their own learning curves – ask the booming IT industry in India who contribute a major chunk of country’s GDP by supporting live applications and bug fixing.

Another point is that, DRS makes interesting TV viewing and adds novelty of the experience of watching the game. I come back to the point that the game must learn to respect the fans. In this IPL era, the fans want value for their money. Spectator fatigue was a term hitherto unknown to us. We need to innovate to keep the fan base intact.

How does India adopting DRS help world cricket? With BCCI backing the DRS, its financial clout over other nations and ICC will ensure that countries like Sri Lanka, West Indies etc. will be encouraged to use this technology.

We need to win back the fans by embracing newer technologies, encouraging good quality cricket by providing sporting wickets. And yes, we also need to win matches abroad too.

The Dhoni way may not be the right way ahead for this to happen!