Is It Time To Handover The Reins To Kohli?

India’s most successful captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni is struggling both as a batsman as well as a leader, says Arijeet Dutta.

- Arijeet Dutta

“He used to be the finisher, India’s pride and world’s envy, but he is struggling a bit now. It is tough when you are not playing regularly; it can affect your performance. But my advice would be to just let him be because he has won India so many matches” - Sunil Gavaskar , former India skipper and opening batsman

The above comment aptly sums up the present state of India’s current ODI and t20 skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni (MSD). Smarting under the defeats against South Africa (3-2) and Bangladesh (2-1), msd has suddenly become a pariah in the Indian squad with the recent ODI series loss to Australia. All these despite Dhoni’s team India making it to the semi final of World Cup 2014, when nobody gave them a chance to even go beyond initial stage of the tournament. The mounting losses have also led to calls for replacing Dhoni with Virat Kohli in the shorter formats ie odi and the twenty20 (t20).

Dhoni, at present, is hardly the skipper whose every move used to be a masterstroke. Whether asking Joginder Sharma, a newcomer, to bowl the last over in the 2007 t20 World Cup final or promoting himself ahead of an in-form Yuvraj Singh in the 2011 ODI World Cup final. His captaincy has of late been very uninspiring. He has made some strange moves which defied all logic. In the ODI series against Australia, many are questioning the rationale behind dropping ace spinner Ravichandran Ashwin after just two bad games and taking off Ravindra Jadeja from the attack just when he was getting into a good rhythm in the Melbourne encounter.