Its Dhoni’s turn to feel the heat
Posted on: June 18, 2009
Before this T20 world cup almost every move of Dhoni was hailed by most of the fans. Some said that he was(is) a master mind, while some said that the moves made by him were ill-logical and it was sheer luck that made him a succesfOOl captain.You ought to believe the latter ones now, as all the ‘ill-logical’ moves made by him in the current T20 world cup fell flat miserably!! Be it the decision to continue with the spinners when the west-Indian batsmen were pouncing on them, or sending Ravindra Jadeja in a crucial encounter against england (who doesn’t have enough batting prowess even to clear the 30 yard circle !!) , when the asking rate was climbing above 8. If this was not enough he was responsible(atlist i feel he was) for the wicket of Harbhajan against RSA, as he denied an easy single to yuvraj singh who was at the non-strikers end. So bhajji sir had to play the next ball, on which he got himself out, and it was downhill from then onwards.
It was a shame to lose against South Africa as at once we just had to score 90 runs from as many balls with 8 or 9 wickets in hand!! And yes how can anyone forget the change in batting approach that our captain has ‘incorporated’, thanks to which we lost all the super8 matches. You could always here the boos in NBH TV room when he came to bat. People even started comparing him with rahul dravid..(but i feel he has a long way to go as far as his technik is concerned :D ). All his will moves will now be questioned, and those should be.
Even after cursing him so much :P , i still feel he is better than most of the previous captains and a better batsmen, just that he needs to revert back a touch to his old batting style (I loved the-way he used to dig a yorker out for a six, which it seems now that he has almost forgotten). And he and our team will be allrite!!
But for now the team is in dire straits and as with most of the earlier captains.. the heat is on Dhoni.
God bless him :)
14 Responses to "Its Dhoni’s turn to feel the heat"
June 18, 2009 at 6:49 pm
This is captain’s job to make strategies and all previous known captains made very good strategies. What you mean about Dhoni is only ‘risk taking’. Since he became captain, he took risks and succeeded initially. On basis of that you can’t compare him with legendary captains and players. Those are far better than Dhoni. Atleast they know what their strength and weaknesses.
If you are talking about batting style, I never found him as a batsman. He plays shots very odd manner and sometimes that brings runs to him. Even Bhajji also plays some cracky shots(;)).
Still if you are comparing him with legendary players then just watch his press conference after the match we lost against England. He said ‘sorry’ to Indian Fans but he never felt that.
Hope so, Dhoni will stop making experiments and risk taking and India will perform better in West Indies tour.
June 18, 2009 at 7:03 pm
@Raul: I told you it will raise eye brows :D … one has raised it big tym :P
@Nishit : Well every one is entitled to have his opinion … but atleast results show that dhoni is a better captain. How many captains have won or even drawn a series overseas?
How many won us world cup? Okay forget a world cup, how many even won us a triangular series??. I know just result cant be the scale to judge a captain, but his ‘ill looking’ decisions have won us most of the times. You rightly said he takes risks and those risks pay him off most of the time, if you call this co-incidence i call it confidence!!
June 19, 2009 at 5:09 am
Please stop this discussing anyfurther. We are very result oriented. When his moves were paying no one was complaining and once we fail everybody starts complaing.
I still remember the Last time t20 final with pakistan and Joginder sharma bowling the last over. Everyone has his heart in the mouth when Misbah has hit that Six and only 5 required to win of 4 balls.
There is something called luck and risk always involved in the game. When you take the risk and get the luck going you are called as cool and great captain. when not it results in the conversation and criticism as what is mentioned above.
June 19, 2009 at 6:00 am
@Kushal: So as it turns out you are trying to say Dhoni won us the world cup, not the team ? And by the way what was the strategy that he employed in that tournament. No one ever reported on that! Okay somehow everybody missed out on that probably.
Unlike most other captains he had the privilege of having the best bunch already in hand. All others and mostly Ganguly received a team that had half legends and half jokers. The strategy is formed not in the field. It is about how you choose your players, the roles you assign them from practice sessions to the match day.
Given that you have talked about risk, a short comment is worthy. He actually took no risk in being the captain. He is the captain of a team that has 7-8 players who can single handedly win the match for him. Whats risky over there ?
If you really want to talk of captaincy, risk and strategy. Let us just walk around the park and play some cricket. I will show you what these things are. I will show you what being a captain means.
btw… lol @ confidence.
June 19, 2009 at 6:36 am
@brajmohan : I wish it were true. I think most of us who are now against dhoni are those who were never on his side. Agree Nishit ?
For me I hate him. He is neither a batsman nor a wicket keeper. I am still wondering how he is in the team. WoW, all this while he is the captain!
June 20, 2009 at 5:53 am
one more bro…rasing eye bro :P …
This could go endless actually….but still just to add a bit of spice :D …
you’re talking about strategies…if you remember t20 final, decision of asking yusuf pathan to bowl which lead to younis khan’s crucial wicket … decision to bring irfan who got afridi’s wicket..and obviously … bringing jogi for the final over (which even i felt was ill-logical :D ..). asking all the spinners to bowl in the bowl out (tie t20 league match against pakistan). The fact remains that i cant point out each and every crucial decision of his here. I agree that its the team that wins u matches not the captain only, but you need to attribute some part of it to the captains as well.
If Ganguly tot us how to win … then Dhoni is teaching the team how to do it consistently (barring this world cup :D ).
I agree he doesnt have a batting technique.. but he slogs it out by hard work and i feel he is a better batsmen than few in the team (again..barring this world cups performance :) . Don’t forget he gives us the luxury of having one more batsman in the team.. and by the way whom do u want in place of him as a wicked-keeper (:) ) .. parthiv patel?? or dinesh karthik??? :)
@brajmohan: Dude i m not result oriented.. you dont have any other evaluation measure apart from performance.. thats y i pointed out his performance as a captain. Had i been result oriented i wouldnt have backed him as a captain aftr the poor performance in the world cup.
June 20, 2009 at 7:07 am
lol continues.
“Dhoni is teaching the team how to do it Consistently”. :))
You didn’t mean that, did you ?
Why not dinesh karthik. Okay he doesn’t slog, but who cares ? He is a much better batsman than many others. Proof of concept: He was part of Indian national team even without being a keeper. He played as part of the playing 11 as a specialist batsman. And IMHO he isn’t the best keeper we have generated either, but definitely he has been trained not to repeat his mistakes as a keeper.
June 20, 2009 at 8:14 am
my last comment
If ifs and ands are like pots and pans, there would be no tinkers.
ye line tere liye hi boli thi shayad sidhu ne.
waise I am extremely sorry that I posted a comment on your article which atleast was good for nothing……
but dont worry……..
I wont comment anymore now……….
Thanks.
July 11, 2009 at 9:33 am
Oh so you blog too!
Cool :)
July 11, 2009 at 10:59 am
yeah .. kind of :D
but m not a frequent blogger… at least till now.. :)
July 14, 2009 at 2:57 pm
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A step towards Destiny 
June 18, 2009 at 6:03 pm
I am not one among the greatest fans of Dhoni so I can talk against him. Whom do you want to compare him with ? Kapil dev, Azhar, ganguly, tendulkar ? whom ?
He cannot be compared to any of those. Period.
And coming to his batting style. Consider my words, he doesn’t have a technique. Neither is the technique sound nor is it stylish. One thing he does possess is sheer power. Yes, he can boast of that. I too liked the way he digs out the yorker to generate a six. But tell me, How many matches would the bowlers take to note his trick. Bowlers don’t bowl such fast yorkers anymore. At least the level of cricket I played I never forgot what was a batsman’s strength. At International levels they are paid to perform better and hence are better equipped too. They might even have manuals on each player. ( IF they don’t they should! ;-) )
And I guess this team needed this. They had to lose this tournament let them come back to reality. They have to play good cricket to win matches. Freak decisions help the brave but attitude (towards the game) matters even in 20-20 format.
June 18, 2009 at 6:34 pm
@rahul: i dunno how many eye-brows will this raise, but i feel he is atleast a better strategist than some of the earlier captains. to name a few: sir Sachin tendulkar, Kapil dev, Azhar. And barrring from this T20 worldcup performance, he is on level terms with Ganguly as a captain, if not better.