It is a widely acknowledged fact that a calm and composed attitude played a major role in the rise of the leader “MS Dhoni”. After a dismal performance in the Caribbean world cup, with no expectations, the BCCI gave the captaincy reigns to him in the inaugural ICC World T20 at South Africa.
Who would have guessed that he will come out all guns blazing with his unpredictable antics on the field? Currently, he is the only skipper to win all three ICC tournaments and he is keeping on adding feathers to his cap.
The 37-year-old, who was just 15 matches old in the due course of the famous Commonwealth Bank series in 2008 led the camp successfully and exposed the young Indian talents to the world. Those were the times when Tri-Series meant a lot in the Australian conditions.
Defeating Australia in the finals 2-0, the scenes of Piyush Chawla pulling off a dolly by dismissing James Hopes still remains fresh among the cricket enthusiasts.
“The Dhoni Touch” by Bharat Sundaresan gives us a better understanding of how Dhoni groomed his team in the initial stages. During the fourth match of the series, India defeated the kangaroos comfortably by five wickets, thanks to an ominous spell by Ishant Sharma.
When just 10 runs were required to pull off a historic win at Melbourne, Dhoni signalled the dressing room for a pair of gloves. But the actual call was to convey his fellow mates not to get carried away by the post-match celebrations. He even intimated the same to his partner at crease Rohit Sharma not to get over enthusiastic by the victory.
The author further added how Dhoni explained Rohit to shake hands with the players after the match. Dhoni clearly wanted to convey a message to the outer world that it wasn”t an upset defeating the hosts at their ground and the players obliged to his words.
India went on to win the series as they decimated both Australia and Srilanka in the remaining matches. Gambhir remained as the highest run-getter while Irfan Pathan and Praveen Kumar made the most from the conditions.3
The above content was shared in the ICC official website by its digital content manager Alistair Hogg.
