Dhoni should stop acting like a sore loser
He was once considered the man with the "Midas Touch", but post the 2-0 loss in the just concluded T20I series against South Africa, one thing is sure - Mahendra Singh Dhoni's time is up. Like all captains, Dhoni too had a shelf life and sadly, it is time India's most successful skipper - strictly on the basis of statistics - realises that.
For a man who believed in keeping silent every time the media's spotlight was aimed at him - even during the spot-fixing fiasco in IPL-6 that rocked Indian cricket - Dhoni came up with bizarre reasoning after both the first and the second loss in Dharamsala and Cuttack respectively.
While he blamed the umpiring decisions and the dew for losing in Dharamsala, he felt that too much strategising cost India the game in Cuttack and he himself needed to be a lot more carefree. But then, the question is, who asked India not to use the Decision Review System (DRS)? In fact, the ICC has almost begged the BCCI to approve the use of the DRS in bilateral series. Now when the decisions didn't go in Dhoni's favour, he wants to cry foul?
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Indeed times have changed and how. From a man who was an epitome of calmness and composure, Dhoni is behaving like a sore loser at the twilight of his cricketing career. Then again, coming to Cuttack, while Dhoni claims the team used too much brains, it looked just the opposite. Two run-outs in a T20I doesn't really show use of much brain, nor does Dhoni's decision to still play Ambati Rayudu and leave out Ajinkya Rahane when the latter is definitely the in-form player over the last 12 months.
As former skipper Sourav Ganguly rightly said, Rahane is the next best batsman in this Indian team after Virat Kohli and that is irrespective of the format.
Ganguly made no bones about the fact that the move to bench Rahane was surprising to say the least.
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It would have been better if Dhoni would actually stand up and accept that the South Africans had outplayed the hosts in both the games and the better team won on both occasions.
Luckily, the third match was washed off at the Eden Gardens on Thursday, else a series whitewash was very much on the cards.
Interestingly though, even as Dhoni went from pillar to post to crib, Test skipper Virat Kohli came up with a side of his that was reminiscent of Ganguly. Even though Kohli hates to lose, he had the guts to accept that South Africa played better cricket and the losses were a blessing in disguise going into the World T20 next year.
And this is exactly what Ganguly was known for. Even though he would be very harsh on his players behind closed doors, every time the media raised doubts - in regards to the performance of his boys - Ganguly would stand up and back them to the hilt.
In fact, Kohli also went ahead and rang the warning bell by making it clear that the team needed to get the combinations right if they wanted to make an impact in the World T20. If that was a cheeky jibe at Dhoni for not picking Rahane, nobody will know.