MS Dhoni: There is logic behind my gut feel

MS Dhoni

MS Dhoni has said that his instinctive captaincy decisions on the field don’t lack logic and that such moves are based on his prior experience of playing the game for a long time.

"I don't plan a lot and believe in my gut feel. But what many people don't understand is that to have that gut feel, you have to have experienced that thing before.

"For instance, you don't know anything about bikes. I open one of my bike engines and keep it in front of you and ask you 'which model does your gut feeling say this engine belongs to', you will be clueless. You won't have a gut feeling because you don't know anything about the object there.

"My gut feeling comes from my past experiences of all the cricket I've played in my life and the situations I have faced. It's not something you just feel for a moment without any logic," the Indian captain was quoted as saying in his interview to bcci.tv.

Grateful to seniors:

Dhoni, who celebrates his 33rd birthday today, credited the retired Indian senior players for their inputs and the freedom they gave him in letting their younger teammate take charge of the unit.

“The best thing about the senior players was that with their experience they had a lot of ideas and suggestions to give me. But more importantly, if I didn’t agree with some things they said, I could tell them so. They were absolutely fine with it and after 10-15 minutes would again come up with a different idea or options and then leave it to me, give me a few deliveries to think about it and decide.

“That really gave me the comfort of knowing that I can be honest and straightforward with them without the fear of offending them. As a young captain with such stalwarts around, you can feel that pressure. But I was very fortunate to have the kind of senior players around me that I did. Because of them I was able to be myself and develop my own style of captaincy,” said Dhoni, who has captained the ‘Fab 4’ – Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman – to greater success.

Laid-back captaincy:

Dhoni, who has always been laid back, letting the bowlers do their job unless it goes close to irreparable levels, made clear that forcing a bowler to bowl a particular line might backfire.

“Although I am leading a young team, I don’t like to give a plan that the bowler is not comfortable implementing. I might want a bowler to bowl a particular length but it could be difficult for him to bowl that length 80 per cent of the time. So I let the bowlers start off with their own plan and own fields and encourage them to think for themselves.

“If I give them a plan, they will take it and keep bowling in the same way without thinking. And tomorrow when they’re on their own, they won’t know what to do.

“So, I let them execute their plan and when it doesn’t work, I step in with alternate suggestions. That way they understand why their plan didn’t work, they discover what works for them, and their overall knowledge about their game improves,” concluded Dhoni, who will be hoping that his bowlers deliver in the all-important Test series against England starting July 9.