DHONI THE DON: DESTINY'S DESIGN?

Anil Kumble, India's highest wicket taker and Test team captain, resigned from Test cricket today. The indomitable fighter and gentleman of unimpeachable integrity and quiet dignity, bowled his last ball for India after making the sudden decision which was announced towards the end of the day's play in the Test match at Delhi. An injury to his left hand a couple of days back while trying to take a difficult catch was the final signal to him that he had played his part and that it was time to leave the stage.

616 wickets in 131 Tests, 337 One Day wickets from 271 matches, over 2500 Test runs and even a Test century. This is an awesome record that places Anil Kumble in the league of the all-time greats of Indian cricket like Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev and Sachin Tendulkar. Captaincy, which had eluded him for no real reason for most his long career, also came to him befittingly at the fag end after Dravid suddenly quit the job in the wake of the World Cup disaster.

However, when he did become captain, not even he would have known that his reign would be so short, and that perhaps destiny had a design to make Dhoni the undisputed king of Indian cricket in a hurry.

Within hours of Kumble announcing his retirement, Mahendra Singh Dhoni was appointed the captain of the Indian Test team. He is now the captain of the team in all the three versions of the game. He is also the captain of the IPL Chennai Super Kings Team. K Srikkanth who is from Chennai has just taken over as Chairman of Selectors. In short, Dhoni is now the undisputed boss of Indian cricket. In fact it would not be wrong to call him the 'don' because of the kind of unchallenged power he has. And this even before leading an Indian team in a Test match as a full fledged captain.

It all started for Dhoni when the big three of Indian cricket, Sachin, Saurav and Dravid decided to skip the inaugural T20 World Cup. On Sachin's suggestion Dhoni was appointed the captain of that team. No one then gave India even an outside chance to win that tournament considering the disaster that had recently struck India in the One Day World Cup and the fact it was a young, untested team without the big guns. And then, the unbelievable happened. India won that cup. Dhoni's stature instantly shot through the roof and he was appointed the One Day captain too. Was there a choice?

Even in those early days, Dhoni had started calling the shots with some arrogance. He dropped an in form Ganguly and did not play the picked Sehwag in the Tri Series in Australia. India won that tournament too. That set him up as the only claimant for the job of the Test captain after Kumble. In fact, an increasing number of voices started demanding that Kumble should retire immediately and make way for him.

Kumble, however, had no such retirement plans. But he did not know that the wheels of destiny were working overtime to push Dhoni up and him out.

Virender Sehwag was at one time India's vice captain and had looked certain to take over as captain in time. But fate had something else in store. He suddenly lost form and and had an extended lean run, resulting in him first losing his vice captaincy and then his place in the team. Yuvraj was another talented player who flirted with captaincy similarly but his inability to convert his awesome talent into performance saw that prize rightfully slip away from him.

Sehwag did get back his form and his destructive match winning ways. But, fatefully, that happened only after Dhoni had, as captain, won the T20 World Cup and the One Day series in Australia. So while his place in the team is now secure and he is well on his way to joining the ranks of the great players of the world, captaincy is out of question at this point of time.

In the ongoing India-Australis Test series, Kumble had to miss the second Test at Mohali because of an old shoulder injury. Amit Mishra replaced him and took five wickets on debut, increasing pressure on Kumble to make way for him. Dhoni captained the team and India beat the Aussies by the biggest margin ever in terms of runs. The man with midas touch had done it again, as Kumble watched from the dressing room.

In the Delhi Test, when India posted a mammoth score of 613 for 7 declared in the first innings, India looked set for a big win, Kumble leading the team well and looking good enough to continue captaining India for another series or two. But, fate intervened again. India's fielding suddenly turned sloppy and, thanks to three dropped catches, Australia posted a total of 577, snuffing out all chances of a once certain Indian win.

But, not taking willing to take chances, destiny had Kumble trying to take difficult catch to injure his left hand in the process, necessitating 11 stitches. That injury did Kumble in completely. Although he returned to the field to bowl and take three wickets, it was clear that he would not be fit for the next match at Nagpur. It would be Dhoni captaining the team there, once again.

Two personal setbacks in quick succession in conjunction with the success of his successor succeeded in making Kumble see that his track had reached its end station. And the never-say-die warrior quickly laid down his arms with great dignity and without any rancour, to get a rousing send off, fittingly from the venue where he had taken all ten wickets in an innings against Pakistan. And who carried him on his shoulders for the last time at the Kotla? Yes, the man on whose shoulders the fortunes of team India now lie.

Destiny's hand appears to be playing an almost visible hand in the rise and rise of Mahendra Singh Dhoni in Indian cricket. Destiny got his ball rolling by asking the Big Three to skip the T20 World Cup; destiny has now literally pushed Kumble to make way for him to become the very powerful 'don' of Indian cricket, without a challenger in sight.

India has gone from strength to strength under Dhoni's leadership, notching up win after win. Does it mean that the future of India's cricket is safe and bright in his hands? Or is this that peak before the big fall? Whatever it might be, if past events are any guide, there is little doubt that destiny will continue to show its hand as it has till now.

SACHIN AND SAURAV: MILESTONE AND MILLSTONE!

First, let us blow that trumpet again: Sachin Tendulkar has become the first batsman in the world to score 12,000 runs. Speaking after his stupendous achievement, 19 years on, Sachin responded to his critics by saying "when people throw stones at you, you turn them into milestones." As Sachin reached his milestone, there was another almost forgotten but no less significant milestone being reached at the other end of the pitch.

On October 17, 2008, Saurav Ganguly became only the fourth Indian batsman to score more than 7,000 runs, behind Sachin, Gavaskar and Dravid. Ironically, it was Sachin who spoke of stones even though he has had many more flowers than stones thrown at him all through his career, making him virtually the unquestioned king of Indian cricket, beyond all scrutiny and questioning by any one who is someone in the world of Indian cricket. Saurav, on the other hand, has had a lot worse than stones throw at him, particularly ever since Greg Chappell took over as India's coach.

In many ways, Saurav Ganguly's milestone is much more significant than Sachin's. Sachin's was India's Captain before Saurav took over from him, because it was clear that Sachin did not have it in him to take the additional pressure that captaincy demanded. Saurav not only took to captaincy as if he was born to it but he transformed forever the attitude and approach of Team India to the game and to its opponents. As a result, he went on to become India's most successful captain ever.

If in the seventies Sunil Gavaskar taught a weak Indian team how to draw matches and not lose them, Saurav Ganguly taught it to play hard, aggressive cricket and win. No Indian captain had ever done that before; all captains will try to do that in future. That is an achievement which is far greater than any individual milestone in a team game. If you add 7,000 runs to it, the enormity of his contribution is a complete standout, no less.

Before the series began, Saurav Ganguly, fed up and disgusted with sustained, malicious attempts to throw him out of the Indian team, had announced that he would retire after the ongoing India-Australia series. No other Indian player has faced and survived such hostility and double-faced treatment that has refused to recognise ability and even current form. No other player has made the kind of comeback that Saurav made after he was relieved of captaincy and thrown out of the team by Chappell, setting in motion a series of developments that saw India disgraced in the World Cup. Yet, Mahendra Singh Dhoni dropped him from the One Day team when India toured Australia, on the Chappell inspired excuse that India needed to pick players for the 'future' and the next World Cup! And later, when he failed in just a couple of innings in Sri Lanka, he gave his detractors just the excuse, however dishonest and petty, to call for an end to his career.

Saurav Ganguly has just got out after scoring a century, his 16th, reaching yet another great milestone in his outstanding career. Already he is the highest scorer in this series. His gritty performance in both innings in the first Test helped India save the match. His brilliant century in the second Test has not only held India's innings together and help Sachin achieve his milestone, it has also put India in a very commanding position in the match.

Sachin's milestone had every one gushing and asking him to continue playing for India for many more years, even though at 35 plus, he is about as old as Saurav. Saurav's milestone, on the other hand, seem to be becoming a millstone around the necks of his known detractors. Ravi Shastri, commentating on the match, has had little choice but to grudgingly acknowledge Saurav's effort with the bat. But, to belittle the effort, he has been deviously intent on promoting Mahendra Dhoni as player and captain. Also, he has been repeating ad nauseum that this was Saurav's last series, as if mortally afraid that he would have to see Saurav coming out of retirement and continue playing for India! In fact, the only person who had the courage to talk about that possibility was Peter Roebuck yesterday on CNN-IBN.

See the double standards and the murky politics that have come to occupy centre-stage in Indian cricket? While no one even talks of Sachin's retirement despite his middling performance of late and his recurring injuries, they all want Saurav out despite his sterling performances ever since he made a comeback to the team in South Africa. No one wants to even acknowledge that had there been a rookie in the team in place of Saurav, India would have most likely lost the first Test and would have been already defending a poor total in the ongoing Test. They just want to see his back.

Krishnamachari Srikkanth has become the new chairman of the selection committee. He is from Chennai and Dhoni is the captain of the Chennai Super Kings IPL team. Dhoni is responsible for pushing Saurav out of the team and injecting politics of the Chappell variety into it. He is clearly intent on becoming the unquestioned king of the team. For that he needs unknown midgets, not tall knights. That is why probably Saurav was provoked to say that " now every Tom, Dick and Harry is playing for Team India." Every one is backing Dhoni now and extolling his leadership qualities. My sense is that, blinded by their aversion to Saurav, they are being even more blind to what Dhoni is really up to, and the damage that he will do to the team in the long run.

Saurav's continued brilliance with the bat clearly shows that all talk of dropping him has been motivated, parochial and completely unjustified. But, with Dhoni now securely positioned as the unchallenged leader of Team India, his selection in future is all but ruled out. It is the time of the 'Tom's' of the world who suck up to Dhoni to get into the team. In the face of the seemingly unbreakable wall that he faces, conventional wisdom suggests that Saurav should stick to his retirement plan. That is what all the guilty blokes want him to do.

They don't want the millstone of his milestone around their necks; it is too heavy.

But, may be Saurav should draw inspiration from Sachin who, in response to a question as to when he would retire, told the person who had asked the question that he had come to the wrong press conference. He deserves much better than he has got and his opponents deserve worse than they have. And, to top it all, Team India needs Saurav more than all the Toms, Dicks and Harries of Dhoni and Shastri and others put together. Only the blind cannot see that.
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DHONI BEGINNING TO DIVIDE AND DESTROY TEAM INDIA

Mahendra Singh Dhoni had looked absolutely composed when India won the last One Day Match against Australia, even as his team mates were going crazy with the excitement of beating Australia in Australia. Every one had then praised him for showing extraordinary maturity and balance, a sign, they said, that India had found just the right man to lead the team.

His recent remarks in an interview on Cricinfo have once again brought to surface the disturbing arrogance that has been visible to me and a few others for quite some now. Speaking on the selection of the team under his captainship, he says: “I was pretty clear about the players I wanted in the side”. “Sometimes, it is very important to send the message across, because sometimes people neglect the answer”, he rubbed it in, to clear the confusion once and for all that he was the one responsible for booting out Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid, notwithstanding their recent performances which should have earned them a place in the side.

Dhoni has now publicly verbalized the unmistakably loud message that he had given to the two greats so that no one in the BCCI, the team and indeed the whole country is left in any doubt about who is the unquestionable boss of Indian cricket. If you again see the footage of the moments after India won that match, you may not fail to notice that beneath that cool exterior was the cockiness of the same “message” that he has now broadcast to the world in one of the most naked displays of arrogance ever seen in India cricket.

With just four years of international cricket behind him, what has given Dhoni the courage to show his ugly fangs and obduracy at a time when the Test series against South Africa is about to begin, with Anil Kumble as Captain and Dhoni just another member of the team?

Consider these facts: the 37 year old Kumble has already given up One Day cricket and is not likely to play Test cricket for more than a couple of years at best. Same goes for the Trimurti of Sachin, Sourav and Rahul. Among the remaining players who may play for the country longer, is there anyone at present who poses a threat to Dhoni as Captain? Sehwag, once Vice-captain, has fallen from grace due to his extended poor run that has ensured that he has no chance of becoming skipper. Yuvraj Singh, once seriously thought of as captain material, continues to disappoint with his inconsistent record which may even cost him a place in the One Day side. In the Test team he has in any case failed to find a slot. The others are kids, nowhere near Dhoni as of now and in the near future.

Dhoni the smarty knows that he is an almost impregnable position, and will take over the captaincy of the Test team too, the moment Kumble retires. So, though he may be an ordinary player in Kumble’s side now, he wants to make sure that no one forgets even for a moment as to where the real power lies. His candid remarks on Cricinfo are designed to warn the younger players to remember that they have to suck up to him if they want to keep playing. It is also to tell the senior players that they will be booted out of the Test team too, the moment Kumble steps down.

The BCCI has towed Dhoni’s line and has not criticized him at all. What could be the reasons hidden beneath?

It is possible that through Dhoni, a not so subtle message has been sent out by the BCCI to Kumble: hasten the announcement of your retirement; don’t force us to dump you unceremoniously to make Dhoni the captain of the Test side too. An even louder message is to the seniors: retire with dignity from both forms of the game before you are forced to.

This creation of two virtually antagonistic centers of power in the Test team by the unwise public remarks of poster boy Dhoni does not augur well for the Indian team. The very fact that Dhoni has chosen to time his announcement just before the Test series starts means that he has been a very close observer of Greg Chappell, whose methods which he has adroitly copied to divide and literally terrorize players to dance to his tune.

I had said much earlier that Dhoni had learnt all the wrong lessons from Greg Chappell and had begun to display an obdurate arrogance which will be detrimental to the interests of the Indian team. I had also brought out that India’s victory that Dhoni is dishonestly claiming for himself and his sacking of Sourav and Rahul was actually made possible mainly by the great veteran master Sachin Tendulkar and the unlikely strike bowler Praveen Kumar. Those who were picked as replacements for the dropped players contributed little to the victory. In fact because of their patchy and inconsistent performances, India may well have lost.

As I had said in my previous post, Dhoni is blessed with that one critical element which Napoleon looked for in his Generals: luck. That is why victory has been kissing his feet despite his many mistakes. Success has flooded his head almost completely and his inebriated swagger and disdain for the ability of senior players is going to land him in the only place where you can find drunkards early morning.

Dhoni is most welcome to put his head into whatever he wants to. The BCCI and all cricket lovers have a responsibility to ensure that he does that alone. Team India needs to be rescued before the graph of ascent that the team has seen ever since Sourav Ganguly became the Captain turns into a downward spiral, thanks to one player who has clearly lost his balance.

This post was also published by reuters.com

AUSSIES WEEDED OUT; BE CAREFUL DHONI

Team ‘Indiabulls’ has done it! It has shown the world who the real “obnoxious little weeds” are and how they are to be weeded out. The Indians have faced the worst type of MAO instigated behaviour for months and have emerged victorious. Harbhajan Singh has had the last laugh!

In an earlier post, Team Indiabulls beyond 20K, I had written that Greg Chappell was the best coach that Australia ever had. He did perhaps more for the Australian team as the Indian coach than the great Buchanan did for them as their coach. Chappell’s systematic destruction of Team India had ensured not only its hasty exit from the World Cup but also eliminated any possibility of an India-Australia clash in the tournament, which the Australians may well have lost as subsequent clashes show!

Team India’s winning of the T20 World Cup, its almost winning of the Test series against Australia in Australia, but for many dubious umpiring decisions, and now its 2-0 win in the One Day Triseries tournament has confirmed what Greg Chappell and the Aussies always knew: The Indians are as good as, possibly better than, the World Champions.

The credit for setting the stage for this outstanding performance by the Indians goes to a great extent to the always unsung Anil Kumble who as the Test captain showed a rare dignity, steely resolve and strength under immense pressure, to fire up the team. He had taken off symbolically from where Sourav Ganguly had left the team before the fatal Chappell-Dravid combo almost destroyed all the gains. After the Test series, MS Dhoni inherited a fighting unit which was raring to teach the Australians the lesson that no on had been able to teach them in over a decade and a half.

When Ganguly and Dravid were dropped from the One Day squad, I had written that Dhoni seemed to have learnt all the wrong lessons from Chappell and was, like Chappell, selecting his personal team rather than the Indian team, by choosing untried youngsters over India's best players in great nick.

Has this magnificent victory proved me wrong? Not at all!

Let’s recollect some basic facts. Dhoni dropped two great batsmen in favour of two promising rookies, Uthappa and Rohit Sharma. He did not drop any bowler. The new bowlers like Ishant Sharma and Praveen Kumar found a place primarily because of injuries to Zaheer Khan and RP Singh.

Who won the tournament for the team? Was it the young batsmen that Dhoni had preferred over the still-going-great greats? Of course not! It is really the bowlers who got the team the trophy, despite the batsmen almost never doing enough right through. And who was the batsman, but for whom the result would have been a dejected flight back 0-2? The old war horse Sachin Tendulkar who scored a century and 91 in the two matches, adequately covering up the failure of the rest of the chosen batsmen.

Why did Dhoni opt for five bowlers in the last stages of the tournament? He will never admit it, ego, but he realized that he just did not have the firepower with the bat to win matches for him. No batsman, except Sachin and, to some extent Gautam Gambhir, looked good enough to play big match winning innings through the tournament. That is precisely why Dhoni himself had to start playing like the Rahul Dravid he had dropped! The explosive bull had to become the plodding ox to plug this weakness that nearly cost us some matches. In the process, India had lost the genuine match winner that it had earlier found in Dhoni.

Praveen Kumar was initially picked by Dhoni more for his batting skills than his abilities as a strike bowler capable of running through the opposition, given his military medium pace. This was one more unstated admission of the fact that quality batsmen were not available; victory would have to be got by the bowlers, a possibility that looked consistently real particularly because of the way Ishant Sharma exploded on the scene as the genuinely fast strike bowler that India has never had.

That Praveen unexpectedly produced two magical spells in both the finals to tear apart the Australian top order to win the tournament for India was the bonus that nobody, including Dhoni, was expecting. Unfortunately, the victory has everybody writing the epitaph of Ganguly and Dravid when actually their absence has palpably exposed the inadequacies of the batting line up.

I had earlier written that Yuvraj Singh may look brilliant when he gets going but he has serious limitations. That is why even after having played over 200 matches, consistency eludes him. This is not likely to change in the future. The other youngsters like Uthappa, Rohit Sharma and Raina have a long way to go before they can, if at all, be worthy replacements to the great veterans.

Dhoni, justifying the picking of these youngsters, had said that he wanted to pick players who would have played 80 odd matches before the next World Cup! What is the guarantee that this lot of players will last that long in the team? Dhoni may well find himself looking for new guys just before the World Cup, if he stays captain! But for the bowlers, these youngsters would have actually lost the Triseries tournament for India. That would not most probably have been the case had Ganguly and Dravid been around.

Throughout the tournament, Dhoni could not find the right guy to open with Sachin Tendulkar. What was the need to disturb the best opening pair that India has? Similarly, he could not find a replacement for “The Wall” and was forced to destroy his own explosive role to become one.

Napoleon Bonaparte always gave predominant importance to one factor while selecting a General to lead a campaign. Notwithstanding outstanding professional credentials, before making the final choice he wanted to know if the General was “lucky”, and picked the one who was. Dhoni is blessed with luck, and in abundance. Almost every trick he tries works magically for him. That has helped cover his serious tactical blunders and placed victory at his feet so far.

Luck is a strange companion. It makes you feel as if you are doing everything right even the exact opposite is true. That makes you arrogant and even stubborn, something which Dhoni also is in abundance.

Be careful Dhoni. Remember that Lady Luck also has the strange habit of deserting you, if you ride it too often, at a devastatingly critical moment. Team India deserves better.