One-time poster boy is coming under threat
The day after the celebrations, Sourav Ganguly fielded a phone call. It was the selection committee back in India, saying “Dear John, Goodbye” to his limited-overs career.
Rahul Dravid, who like Ganguly had more than 10,000 runs in the ODI format, had been dropped a couple of months earlier. But with Australian conditions so challenging, it was expected that he would get a recall. He didn’t. Instead, he was out on a Swan River cruise with his young family when the phone rang in his hotel room.
Ganguly never wore the blue shirt again. Dravid did, for 11 games in the autumn of 2009, after those meant to replace the two legends fluffed their lines. The man behind the purge was Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who had been named captain of the experimental lineup that the Indian cricket board sent to the inaugural World Twenty20 in South Africa in September 2007.
The younger, fitter side that Dhoni craved won him the Commonwealth Bank Tri Series — featuring the hosts and Sri Lanka, the two finalists at the 2007 World Cup — in Australia, and he was unapologetic about the cull afterwards. “Sometimes it is very important to send the message across, because sometimes people neglect the answer,” he told Cricinfo in an interview.
“Why are people not asking the same questions now? Because if the result was not in our favor, what would have happened? Would the people have been really behind this side or behind individuals?”
Nearly a decade on, the sideversus-individual debate is now centered on Dhoni’s place in the T20 side. The trigger for it was a loss to New Zealand in Rajkot on November 4. India were chasing 197, and lost both openers early. Shreyas Iyer was becalmed and dismissed after a bright start, while Hardik Pandya, the new poster boy, made just one. By the time Dhoni marked his guard, India needed 12 an over.
He and Virat Kohli, who was in sublime touch, added 56 from 44 balls. Dhoni used up 25 of them, scoring just 24, before Kohli (65 from 42 balls) took one risk too many. Dhoni eventually finished with a 37-ball 49, but the damage had been done, as India fell 40 short.
That Dhoni needs time to play himself in is hardly a new revelation. That’s always been his method, what he calls putting “process over result.” The question is whether India can afford such an approach in a format in which teams such as the West Indies, winners of two of the last three World T20s, pack their lineup with power-hitters.
The numbers suggest that Dhoni has actually improved his T20 skills in recent times. In 2016, he made 238 runs in 16 innings, at an impressive strikerate of 149.68 — by a distance, the best numbers of his career. In nine innings in 2017, he has managed 169 runs. The strikerate has dropped to 131, still well above his career figure.
Kohli, one of the youngsters who benefited the most from that 2008 reset, remains a big Dhoni backer. “First, I don’t understand why are people only pointing him out, I’m not able to understand this,” he said, feathers clearly ruffled after New Zealand had been beaten 2-1. “If I fail three times, no one is going to point fingers at me because I’m not over 35. The guy is fit, he is passing all the fitness tests, he is contributing to the team in every way possible, tactically on the field, with the bat.”
The larger malaise for India in the T20 format is the reluctance to see it as a distinct entity. Too often, those that are integral members of the 50-over team get backing in a form of the game that demands explosiveness from ball one. Dhoni and Shikhar Dhawan are both essential to India’s 2019 World Cup plan. But whether they should even be in the mix for the next World Twenty20 in 2020 — Dhoni will be 39, while Dhawan averages a dismal 21.72 with a strike-rate of 118.3 — is another matter.
BANGALORE: Perth, Western Australia. Jan 20, 2008. Less than a fortnight after the ugliness of the Sydney Test, marred by atrocious umpiring errors and the Harbhajan Singh-Andrew Symonds racism scandal, India romped to a famous 72-run victory at a venue where no visiting team other than the mighty West Indies had won in more than two decades.