Line & Length
R Mohan
Tricks of the trade are now coming to Dhoni
February 21, 2008
When a captain starts talking of a learning curve rather than winning a series you can be sure his team had hit a losing streak. Fortuitous then that Team India should come quickly out of the state of depression they seemed headed into. One good match changes everything and that is what happened not only to the skipper but also his deputy.
M.S. Dhoni, thought of as the eternal optimist of Indian cricket, was in uncharted territory when he began speaking of how his team was benefiting from the experience gained in a couple of crashing defeats. Not often in his stint as captain has Dhoni been under the kind of pressure he experienced while shuttling between Australian cities in this merry-go-round of a tri-series.
The honeymoon period for India's latest ODI captain cannot even be said to be over and already Dhoni is beginning to show signs of the kind of stress skippers of Team India inevitably undergo from media scrutiny. Clearly under pressure to explain what went wrong in an ODI, Dhoni had said some weird things about how Sreesanth's thinking was causing him problems while Munaf Patel's not so brainy approach was more in the line of what a captain wants from his bowlers.
This was a bizarre line that could only have come from a captain not trying to find words to camouflage his thinking. He just came out and said what was in his mind. It is a tribute to his straightforward ways of thinking that the skipper should retain his natural style of speaking through all the pressure. His defence of Yuvraj Singh brought out his character best.
To hear the media chatter around a class batsman whose runs suddenly dry up must be particularly distressing for a captain who has absolutely no choice but to keep faith in the old dictum that while class is permanent, form is strictly temporary. Dhoni backed Yuvraj to the hilt. But then he had to because there are few batsmen in this lineup, apart from Sachin Tendulkar at the very top, who can win an ODI off his own bat.
Having decided to implement the youth policy, Team India cannot even countenance leaving out Yuvraj from the lineup on the premise that his form is poor. Would Australia leave out Ricky Ponting because he has failed a few times? The meat of the middle order is represented by captain and vice captain and it would take the likes of Rohit Sharma years to show grace under pressure.
Republished with permission from The Asian Age
M.S. Dhoni, thought of as the eternal optimist of Indian cricket, was in uncharted territory when he began speaking of how his team was benefiting from the experience gained in a couple of crashing defeats. Not often in his stint as captain has Dhoni been under the kind of pressure he experienced while shuttling between Australian cities in this merry-go-round of a tri-series.
The honeymoon period for India's latest ODI captain cannot even be said to be over and already Dhoni is beginning to show signs of the kind of stress skippers of Team India inevitably undergo from media scrutiny. Clearly under pressure to explain what went wrong in an ODI, Dhoni had said some weird things about how Sreesanth's thinking was causing him problems while Munaf Patel's not so brainy approach was more in the line of what a captain wants from his bowlers.
This was a bizarre line that could only have come from a captain not trying to find words to camouflage his thinking. He just came out and said what was in his mind. It is a tribute to his straightforward ways of thinking that the skipper should retain his natural style of speaking through all the pressure. His defence of Yuvraj Singh brought out his character best.
To hear the media chatter around a class batsman whose runs suddenly dry up must be particularly distressing for a captain who has absolutely no choice but to keep faith in the old dictum that while class is permanent, form is strictly temporary. Dhoni backed Yuvraj to the hilt. But then he had to because there are few batsmen in this lineup, apart from Sachin Tendulkar at the very top, who can win an ODI off his own bat.
Having decided to implement the youth policy, Team India cannot even countenance leaving out Yuvraj from the lineup on the premise that his form is poor. Would Australia leave out Ricky Ponting because he has failed a few times? The meat of the middle order is represented by captain and vice captain and it would take the likes of Rohit Sharma years to show grace under pressure.
Republished with permission from The Asian Age
