MSD: The misfit who thrived

Dhoni’s decision to retire from Test Cricket must have been a huge relief for many. For the classical Test Cricket lover, it must have been frustrating to see Dhoni in the Whites. One look at the stance & the technique was good enough to show the world the arrival of a misfit on the grandest stage. The front foot defense made way for short armed jabs. The traditional shots were replaced by unorthodox ones. At times, his batting looked ugly, going all around the ball in seaming conditions, constant plays & misses outside the off stump, poking at the ball on the fifth stump line. But for all his shortcomings, here was a man who played 90 odd tests for India, in the process taking the team to the top of the rankings. He could have easily gone to play much more, if not for his personal decision to retire. The most successful Indian Captain ever; here was a small town boy who made it big with his talent, determination & hard work. The world noticed this lad grow in stature with time. 

While Dhoni is priceless in the limited formats of the game, Test Cricket never seemed to be his forte.  The reliability that can be seen in his ODI batting could never be transformed into the tests. The overseas tours only compounded the misery, both in terms of batting & captaincy. His shrewd ODI mind seemed out of sorts when it came to improvising in Test Cricket with imaginative & attacking field settings. A lackluster bowling attack didn't help either. Whatever one may say, one cannot blame Dhoni solely for India’s humiliating debacles overseas. Relinquishing the captaincy might have been the easy thing to do in the aftermath of some horrible tours, but his decision not to succumb to the growing demand for his sacking was mature, to say the least. There was no successor to Dhoni as a captain in the team few months ago. Kohli was blooded into vice captaincy role only some time ago and needed time to settle. Seeing the way Kohli did the job in Adelaide might have made the decision easier. For long, India had this problem of a good wicket keeper batsman. Till now, India hasn’t found the solution to this problem in Tests. Say whatever we want to, but the fact that he played 90 odd tests for his country shows his importance to the team. A great leader who always backed his team and took the onus of his decisions, he earned the respect of his team-mates. The captaincy problem might be solved for now, but the wicket keeper batsman might continue to haunt the Test team. All this in a format he was not comfortable with, and we are sure to get a treat of his batting prowess in the limited formats with many more laurels yet to be achieved.

He showed what a tough man from a small town could dream & achieve. He has been a great role model, not just for sports, but for any field. The feats that he had achieved in his career will continue to inspire a huge number of us to try to emulate these through parallel feats in our respective careers.