Why Dhoni's still India’s best bet as Captain

“So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit. It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.” – John Greenleaf Whittier in ‘Don’t Quit’.

“The easiest thing for me to say right now is to say, ‘I quit captaincy’ and be a part of the side. But that’s like running away from the responsibility,”- MS Dhoni, after India’s 1-2 defeat to England in the recently concluded Test series.

Apparently, a billion cricket fanatics have been talking about one man – Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the man with the ‘Midas touch’. Critics may undermine his ability of leading the side after a dismal record, losing 10 out of the previous 16 Test matches (the wins coming against West Indies and New Zealand). But there is no doubt that he’s still India’s best bet as the captain. The fact is that the current Indian team is in a transition phase and a change in captaincy is unlikely to pull them out of troubled waters.

Dhoni’s track record as the Indian skipper speaks volumes about his ability to lead the Indian side. He has taken India to the pinnacle in all the three formats of the game, a feat none of the captains before him have achieved. Be it the ICC World T20 in 2007, the number one position in ICC ranking in the Test arena for 22 months on the trot or the pinnacle in ODI format, by winning the 2011 World Cup; Dhoni has displayed his prowess and bold leadership time and again. The Captain Cool, as he’s fondly called in the cricketing world, has all the attributes one looks for in a captain. Navjot Sidhu would have aptly described him as ‘cool as a cucumber’. The coolness, calmness and the maturity he displays on the field has a profound effect on the team, leading the side with such poise, even with the expectations of a billion fans in the background. Not without reason was he named the captain of ICC World Test and ICC ODI teams for 2009.

With an average of 52 and over 7000 runs in ODIs, he plays a Bevan-like knock far too often and is one of the finest finishers the game has ever seen. And who can forget his Captain’s knock (91 of just 79 balls) in the final of the 2011 World Cup, ending the 28 year drought of India winning the World Cup. His ODI and Test records are right up there on the list, among all the Indian captains to date.

The cricket fans love his ability to take uncanny decisions and emerge out as a winner. Be it the decision to hand over the ball to Joginder Sharma to bowl the last over in the final of the T20 World cup, or the decision to promote himself up the batting order to put up a phenomenal batting display in the final of the 2011 World Cup. Though some of his decisions haven’t worked of late, the choice of rank turners being one of them, one needs to realize that a captain is as good as his team. Why put all the blame on the captain then? There is a dearth of quality pace and spin bowlers in India, who can take 20 wickets for you. Unless you do that, the probability of winning a Test match becomes zero. Add to that the indifferent form of the Sehwags, the Gambhirs and the Sachins, and you end up getting a distasteful recipe of ‘failure’.

As the saying goes, ‘A man is the best judge of himself’, Dhoni needs to assess if playing too much cricket might be doing him the damage. With five successful stints for Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in the IPL as a skipper, I think he has too much up his sleeves. He needs to prioritize and focus on his current stint as the captain of India rather than as the skipper of CSK. As far as Virat Kohli is concerned for the top job, he’s a long term prospect. He’s currently in top form and enjoying his game. Additional responsibilities might have an impact on his current form, which might be too big a risk to take under the current condition of India’s deplorable middle order. Let the critics keep playing hard at Dhoni’s stint as the current captain, he’ll answer them as he has always done. By winning.