The article speaks about terrible captainship of MS Dhoni in the finals of T20 World Cup against Sri Lanka. All his decisions were wrong, right from team selection to batting order to bowling changes.
Sometimes bad captainship is compensated by excellent batting or some good bowling on the part of the team. In the finals of T20 World Cup it did not happen. Sri Lanka not only defeated India but thrashed India in every department, that is batting, bowling and fielding.
Dhoni’s captainship was hopeless by every standard. In the group matches and semi-finals Dhoni made blunders after blunders but got away with them due to excellent batting of Virat Kohli. This time it was Sri Lanka. Always bad captainship cannot win matches.
Mohammad Shami, the best fast bowler of the side was not in the playing 11, both in the semi-finals and the finals. It was the whims of caprices of Dhoni. In place of Mohammad Shami it was Mohit Sharma who was hopeless both in the semi-finals and the finals. To make matters worst, Dhoni could not bowl him for more than 2 overs. He gave 18 runs uselessly. Those two Dhoni himself could have also bowled. It looks like Dhoni is not bothered about victory or loss. He is more interested to play with players with whom he has good terms.
Too much reliance on Suresh Raina as a bowler had brought disaster to India. Every day Dhoni had underbowled his orthodox bowlers like Bhubaneshwar Kumar or Ravindra Jadeja and went on completing 4 overs of Suresh Raina. In 4 overs he gave away 24 runs, and was not a bother at all for Sangakkara and Jayawardhana, who played his balls like football.
The batting line up of Dhoni was hopeless to the power infinity. Virat Kohli again scored 77 runs, and made the Indian total look respectable otherwise India would not have completed 100 runs in the final. None of the other Indian batsmen could negotiate the balls of Malinga, Herath, Kulasekhara and others. Sending Yuvraaj Singh and himself coming at No. 5 were blunders. Yuvraaj wasted 21 balls for his paltry 11 runs. Dhoni’s 4 runs of 7 balls was a worst knock of recent times. Suresh Raina was a right choice. Last day he scored 21 runs of 8 balls. Dhoni had no confidence on his batting but absolute confidence on his bowling.
After seeing Dhoni’s hopeless captainship, everyone thinks that if Sri Lanka would have lost the finals, it would have the wrong team to win T20 World Cup. India did not deserve to win. There were individual heroes like Virat Kohli, Suresh Raina, Amit Mishra, but when the decision maker is a blunder master, Dhoni’s India never deserved to win. Sangakarra and Jayawardhana deserved the trophy and retired gracefully.
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