Back to the pavilion

There was a time when Mahendra Singh Dhoni could do no wrong… be it his love for motorcycles, his hairstyles or his performance on the field as the captain of the Indian cricket team. He was called the man with the Midas touch. The 2007 T20 World Cup triumph shot Dhoni into prominence and his popularity continued to grow in the following years. It skyrocketed after he led India to the 2011 World Cup win and was nicknamed ‘captain cool’ — ad campaigns and strategies were devised around his style of cricket and captaincy. In other words, he was the blue-eyed boy of the fans, the media and the experts.

Dhoni still remains the blue-eyed boy, but perhaps, only of the controversial, now former, BCCI president N Srinivasan. How else do you explain a skipper holding on to his position in Test cricket, after performing worse than say, the so-called ‘terrible’ captains like Sachin Tendulkar?

India has failed to win a single Test match away from home in the last three years. This winless streak has stretched to 14 Test matches now, including the humiliating 4-0 defeats at the hands of England and Australia. Dhoni’s overseas captaincy record reads like this: 23 matches, five wins, seven draws and 11 losses. Sourav Ganguly even called his captaincy “obnoxious” and too defensive.

Former selector Mohinder Amarnath, in fact, had said that after the disastrous tours of England and Australia in 2012, it was suggested by the selectors that Dhoni should be sacked. But due to ‘internal reasons’ the idea was rejected. The BCCI constitution states that the list drawn up by selectors ought to be vetted by the approval of the president.

Former chairman of selectors, Kiran More, however, feels that Dhoni got a lot of flak for captaining a side, which doesn’t have the ability to win overseas. “Look at the bowling attack he has had — it’s inexperienced and lacks the quality to win Test matches,” he says.

Bishen Singh Bedi, former India captain, says that the support Dhoni has enjoyed from the BCCI is unparalleled. “Every Indian captain — be it Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev or Ganguly — had differences with the authorities. But no one has enjoyed so much power and support as Dhoni,” he says.

Could this be linked to Srinivasan, India Cements and Chennai Super Kings? “I believe so,” says a former captain. In July 2013, in an interview, Srinivasan said people were “jealous” of Chennai Super Kings because they had Dhoni. He went as far as to suggest that the “savage attacks” on him were happening because he had Dhoni.

It’s not as if a president and a captain haven’t enjoyed a special bond before. Ganguly was supposedly very close to Jagmohan Dalmiya, while Mohammad Azharuddin had close ties with the late Raj Singh Dungarpur. But those ties were restricted to cricket and personal relations, not business interests. In 2013, Dhoni was appointed the vice president at India Cements.

Ever since the IPL spot-fixing scandal broke and Srinivasan’s son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan’s role in handling Chennai Super Kings came under the scanner, Dhoni has kept mum on the issue. Last week when the Supreme Court ordered Srinivasan to step down, the skipper avoided speaking to the media and sent Rohit Sharma in his place for the pre-match conference at the World T20.

As for the question of who should he be replaced with, that has been asked earlier as well. Two cricketers who were considered for the job — Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag — now find themselves on the periphery of Indian cricket due to poor form, age (in Sehwag’s case) and according to some, differences with Dhoni. “He has formed a coterie of cricketers around him, who rarely get dropped,” says a former selector. Suresh Raina, who incidentally is part of Chennai Super Kings, is one such name. Sehwag’s coach AN Sharma went on record to say his ouster from the team was due to personal reasons. For Gambhir, however, Dhoni expressed surprise at his exclusion, and Gambhir too quashed any rumours of a rift between the two.

Dhoni’s potential replacement is Virat Kohli. Former Australian captain Ian Chappell recently said that Kohli would make a better captain. Kohli, 25, hasn’t proved his mettle as a skipper in the recently concluded Asia Cup but is the only possible successor.

In 2013, Dhoni had hinted that he was burdened with captaining the team in all three formats — ODIs, Tests and T20 — but expressed his desire to defend the ODI World Cup. Unlike Tests, in ODI cricket, his record as a captain remains credible and perhaps, safe. But in Test cricket, he should have been sacked long ago.

With challenging tours to Australia and England pencilled in for 2014, the time is right to blood a new Test captain. Perhaps, the wise men of Indian cricket are awaiting orders from the Supreme Court to bring down the axe. And perhaps, like Srinivasan, Dhoni too must be forced to leave, for he refuses to bow out gracefully.

( Aabhas Sharma is a Delhi-based freelance writer )

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