Gone are the days when anything Dhoni touched on the cricket field turned gold. He was not always lucky with the toss, but for him that didn’t often matter either – it was always his style to salvage matches for India from points of absolute defeat. May it be his unique batting prowess or may it be his exceptional ability to read match situations as a captain, he always had that Midas touch in everything he did. But as they say, all good things must come to an end one day and it seems that the proverbial end is getting nearer for that Dhoni magic. If it is really not the end, certainly the magic is waning, and waning in an alarming rate for him and his team.
It had become a habit to the media and his fans, including this writer, to keep on boasting about the Dhoni’s magic as a captain. His decisions were always right, or in the medium term they turned to be right later, like persisting with Rohit Sharma in the team. However if one analyse how he made the decisions in the ongoing New Zealand series then one can find that they were mostly un-Dhoni-like. The most glaring of them all was the decision to promote the in-form Virat Kohli to open the innings and to put Ajinkya Rahane at No.3 in the 4th ODI at Hamilton. It defies logic why he made this obvious tactical error, when Rahane is an established opener and Kohli batting extremely well at No.3. And if he was really serious about trying out Kohli as an opener in the place of struggling Shikhar Dhawan, then why did he revert to using Dhawan as an opener in the 5th ODI at Wellington?
Every expert of the game, every fan of the Indian cricket team is scratching their heads, quite unable to understand why Ishant Sharma is still in the Indian XI. Time and again the fast bowler (if he could be called so) has failed miserably and as Sunil Gavaskar had pointed out, Sharma is not all learning even after this many games to his credit. Even after playing so many matches for the country he hasn’t perfected bowling yorkers or slow balls at the depth. It seems that even a haircut can help him to better concentrate on the areas he aims to bowl at - but he is in no mood to change. It is high time to jettison him from the team and to advise him to play domestic cricket to get better, though chances seem to be less even for such a turn around.
Dhoni’s favourite spinner R. Ashwin is going through a bad phase in his career as well. There is no doubt that he is a talented cricketer and a thinking player. However as his personal coach Sunil Subramaniam says, many technical flaws have crept into his bowling. He has put on a lot of weight and he is not putting his body behind his deliveries and is bowling only with his spinning fingers, without any body involvement in it. He should also be made to go back to the domestic circuit, work on his technical flaws and come back as an effective offie. His batting has improved by leaps and bounds, but he and his captain must be careful about not losing his bowling prowess while he works more strongly in improving his batting. There are many bowlers who have committed this mistake - Irfan Pathan is a case in point. Even when Ashwin is struggling a great deal, Dhoni is not ready to try out Amit Mishra and the leggie has been travelling with this Indian team for a very long time without getting any match.
Dhoni’s CSK team mate Suresh Raina is another batsman who is struggling big time. Dhoni’s liking for his CSK team mates is well known, but he should not get tied down with them. It’s imperative that he thinks beyond them and look for other options. Vijay Sol and Sanju Samson are playing well in the under-19 level, Cheteshwar Pujara could be given a chance in ODIs too, Stuart Binny is another option he has got. When Dhoni gave a chance to Stuart Binny in the 4th ODI, we thought that the all rounder will get an extended run. But he was dropped from the team in the 5th ODI and even in the match that he played, he was not given a chance to bat and when he bowled, it was only for one over. These are not things that we associate the brave captain Dhoni with and these are surely signs of his withering magic and waning self belief as a captain.
MSD was the kind of batsman who, when he was in the crease any target was achievable. He had the knack of pulling out India from every trouble, mostly single-handedly. But suddenly that ability is also missing from his batting. Yes he has been scoring runs recently, but his batting efforts are not yielding the same results as before. He is still making runs and doing everything in his hands to win matches for India, only that he is unable to work out the magic and bring success to his team. He is constantly getting out during a chase without completing his task, which is again quite un-Dhoni-like.
When one takes into consideration that the cricket world cup next year is in Australia and New Zealand, it is a matter of concern that the Indian team, the reigning Champions, are appallingly out of contention, if they are going about their tasks in the present day fashion. However it is also true that we cannot find a better captain that Dhoni now, as the world cup is round the corner. This writer still believes that Dhoni is the man. If Dhoni can get more flexible with his tactics, he can bring back the glorious days of this Indian team. We can only hope that Dhoni will someway get his magic back, which clearly appears waning now.
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