The recent avalanche of questions raised on Dhoni’s ability as captain confirms again, how little was read during success and too much into failures.

Indian team performs poorly and got ousted early in a major tournament means captaincy of Dhoni is tabled for remarks. Suddenly everything which deemed to be right during success becomes wrong. The recent exit from world T20 is just the another one into the long growing list of poor performances by team India in last few years. They were under tremendous scrutiny after been whitewashed by poms in their backyard and stripped off from the pride of being no.1 team, or more so badly tag again as “lion at home and mouse abroad”.

His method of captaincy remained same for last few years. Its just that people rubbed it off during success but calling for heads now after continuous failures.

If you see statistically, India didn’t perform badly in 2012 world T20. Won four out of five matches they played. So, we got to agree on Dhoni remarks of “satisfactory performance”. But we didn’t. Why? Almost everyone synonymously agreed that India played badly and Dhoni made tactical blunders. More so convinced that Dhoni captaincy is bad now; a defensive captain and his method cannot yield success always. How is that? India were knocked out of 2009 and 2010 world T20 even badly, failed to win a single match at super8 stages then. If you add India’s dismissal overseas performance in test and ODI, then pages of complaints exceeds inevitably. Then, why this sudden turn of faith? For record, Dhoni is the only one to captain his team in all four world T20’s.

What triggered this mass outburst? dropping Sehwag and co-incidentally losing to Australia tamely on the same day ? or because India failed yet perform well in world T20 even at sub-continent conditions? If not, and you feel Dhoni captaincy is bad because he relies too much on part time bowlers, seeks excuse in lose, team selections is poor and makes too many tactical blunders like giving Rohit a over ahead of Ashwin against South Africa in crunch situation are some of the reasons, then you are either didn’t followed Indian cricket for last few years or just one of those who looks for fault only during failures.

When asked whether pitch changed during second half in the worldT20 semi final match against Srilanka, Mohammed Hafeez, Pakistan captain instantly replied, “We played poorly and pitch is not to blamed”. Stuard Broad, England captain, young in terms of captaincy experience, after exit said “we played poorly and don’t deserve to qualify.” Whereas Indian captain, Dhoni will still tell you that rain ruined his team chances and picking three spinners when the forecast told a very clear chance of shower is right.

Whatever mistakes you find in Dhoni’s captaincy from recent world T20 are the same ones he is doing for all along in last few years where he bought success. Even in en-route to ODI champions crown in 2011, Dhoni made mistakes and some blunders on the field like picking Sreesanth ahead of R Ashwin and not attacking in middle overs when Srilanka already lost in the finals. If you go reading into test matches, then you can find even more of them which can be categorized under such as defensive, tactical blunder and bizarre team selection.

Its not that Dhoni all of a sudden became bad in captaincy. Dhoni before IPL 2008 and after are two different personality. All these excess burden of leading teams in IPL and CLT20 to go with long International calender certainly worn him down. Take the current scenario for example, exit from world T20 on Oct 2nd and after few days off, Dhoni will fly to South Africa for Champions League T20 on his IPL team Chennai Super Kings assignment and fortnight after that, he will be again leading a team on the field against England in the marquee test series. And add the team meetings, practice session and tactical discussion numbers into those schedule, you will be left with a need to catch your breadth.

I am not here defending Dhoni and his certainly debatable captaincy skills but to say now after world T20 exit, his captaincy not good is pathetic and unfair. If you accepted him after winning ODI world cup, WI and NZ home test series, then you should without any obligation must accept him after early exit from 2012 world T20 also.

Tags: 2012, BCCI, Captain, CB Series, CLT20, Cricket, ICC, India, Indian captain, IPL, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, T20, T20 World Cup, Virat Kohli, World Cup