Dhoni - Just a cricketer! Nothing more, nothing less. Part-1

   
   

     The first of many posts to discuss the cricketing career of one of the most controversial Indian cricket superstars M S Dhoni. The reason is that in India everybody is a cricket critic. That is good in some ways because you get to assess the society at large every time people open their mouth. While Dhoni has been fortunate in many ways I feel the criticisms on Dhoni have been grossly prejudicial. Hence, Dhoni is perceived to have two faces. Dhoni the martyr and dhoni the traitor. This write up will pertain to his not so popular test career, his decisions and the evolution of Indian test team in the last 4-5 years.

     The latest decision of Dhoni to quit test cricket with one match left in an already decided series has drawn a flay of criticisms. Why was it the perfect time to bid goodbye?
1. Dhoni had stated in 2011-12, after the 8-0 loss that, he would consider relinquishing captaincy after the 2015 WC.
2. With the series decided by virtue of the drawn 3rd test the best thing Dhoni could have done was to play under Kohli in the last match to give Kohli another valuable overseas captaincy experience. Even better would have been to give a chance to another keeper batsman. Which is what he did by quitting test cricket all together.
3. Dhoni's role in the team was as much a captain as that of a keeper-batsman. When he decided to stop captaining the Test team he would have continued to play only if he had felt that he would do justice to the team as a pure keeper-batsman. Which obviously he can't hence the decision.
4. Deciding when to play and when to stop is ultimately his call. Dhoni has no reason to prove his sportsmanship by symbolically playing under Kohli, when what he actually wants is to stop playing test cricket, which has not been his cup of tea for quite some time.
     There is no such thing like lack of fighting spirit here.  Because it was his very fighting spirit that kept him hanging to his captaincy job in tests taking all the blame to himself and letting other youngsters focus on more important aspects of their own game than team building.

     When people readily question Dhoni's integrity and sportsmanship with regards to the manner of his retirement one has to remember that it is very easy to attribute intentions to actions. Sachin Tendulkar retired from Test matches with a farewell test series. In this context, how insane would it be to say that Sachin personally wanted an extravagant farewell and that is why he played that last pointless home series against a tainted West Indies side? Though it would be easy to draw coherence between the facts and events, it would be foolish right? We need to understand that attributing ulterior motives to Dhoni's test retirement is as foolish as this Sachin example.

    While, whether he should have played test cricket this long or whether he was a good test captain or whether his technique suited test cricket is totally a different debate. As fans of a wonderful sport the best thing we could do is to respect a sportsman's decision.