The problematic issue of MS Dhoni's retirement - Is it time the India captain bows out with grace?

MS Dhoni just manages to make his ground during the 1st ODI against South Africa

Former India pacer Ajit Agarkar recently questioned Dhoni’s place in the team, and not just as a captain. It has to be admitted he has a point. At his peak, Dhoni had a lot to offer to the Indian team. The unique combination of his shrewd captaincy, smart wicket-keeping and lethal finishing abilities with the bat made him an invaluable asset to the Indian side.

Ian Chappell has often said that every captain has an expiry date and probably MS Dhoni is well past it. His method of strangling the opposition with his spinners and part timers, that worked like magic till a few years ago, is becoming obsolete by the day as teams around the world have begun to play the spinners out and target India’s ever so fragile death bowling.

His almost obstinate insistence of playing line and length bowlers instead of genuine pacers seems to defy logic. But of course, Dhoni’s team selections have always been questioned.

MS Dhoni was never a great wicket keeper, but he often effected timely wickets with his smart work behind the stumps. He did raise the bar with his batting when he first burst on to the scene almost a decade back, but through most of those years Indian didn’t have a genuine alternative who could be as consistent as he used to be in both batting and wicket-keeping.

That’s not the case anymore. There are promising players like Sanju Samson waiting in the wings now. However, wicket-keeping is one department which can still be overlooked to some extent, given that he added immense value through his batting. But his batting prowess seems to be waning these days.

Numbers can be deceiving. He still averages around 43 in ODIs in 2015. That still looks healthy, but it’s important to dig a little deeper.

MS Dhoni's ODI record (2012-2015)

Year	2012	2013	2014	2015
Average	65.5	62.75	52.25	41.72
Strike Rate	87.62	96.04	92.07	84.22

The averages are declining and so are the strike rates. It’s been a while now that he has not been able to finish games well for India – a task he is often considered a master of. There were signs of this fading ability since 2013, but off late it has been quite a regular feature. There was a time when his tactics of leaving the game till the end till late worked almost every time. The logic was to take the game till the point when there is equal pressure on both the bowler as well as the batsman and then he backed himself to clear the ropes even if the target was stiff in the last few overs.

That worked because he had the ability to hit sixes at will to back up his move. That ability seems to have deserted him now. The 2014 T20 game against England when he refused to give the strike to Rayudu is a case in point. Sunday’s game against South Africa was another instance when he left the game for too late and the team paid for it. In the last 1-2 years, there have been many such occasions when he has got out in the death overs after facing a bunch of dots thereby making it almost impossible for others to finish the game coming after him. He simply doesn’t seem to strike the same fear in the opposition's minds anymore.

Problems of the Dhoni-Kohli transition phase

This transition from Dhoni to Kohli is taking way too long. Dhoni did retire from Tests in December 2014 when Kohli through his aggressive style of captaincy demonstrated that he was ready. He has probably done enough now to show he is ready for captaining India in the shorter formats too. Even if he hasn’t, the split captaincy dynamics don’t really seem to work in a country like Indian where there’s a high chances of an ego-clash between these sometimes larger than life players.

Kohli has publicly criticized Dhoni’s indecisiveness earlier this year. That’s not a healthy sign. This transition from Dhoni to Kohli is hurting the players, some of whom seem to be confused about their roles in the team and caught hopelessly between contrasting leadership styles of the two captains.

There is enough evidence that India has not been particularly good at handling retirements in the past. Retiring someone who has done so much for his team is a sticky issue with any country. Teams often tend to stick on with a player longer than they should. Take Ricky Ponting for example.

But India is not just any other country. Cricket and emotions often go hand in hand and it’s difficult to treat them in isolation. We eat, sleep and breathe cricket. It’s that much more difficult to let go off a player of MS Dhoni’s stature.

Every sportsperson has to go through this phase when the age catches up and he knows he’s not the same player anymore but the desire to win games for the country one more time keeps on pushing him to continue. It hurts the team though. It’s quite obvious that Dhoni is struggling now. I guess then it’s time now, that MS Dhoni, the most successful Indian ODI captain and surely one of the greats of the game, retires with some dignity before it gets too late. May be he will answer his critics with a strong comeback or maybe he will vanish without a trace just like he did in Tests. Only time will tell.