MSD Should’ve Quit T20Is in 2016, Now Paying for Delaying Decision
MS Dhoni should have stopped playing T20Is for India back in 2016 itself.
Indians are obsessed with stature and not with the position that an individual holds, especially in sport and more so in cricket.
Hence for the last couple of years we have been constantly told about how a lightweight man like MSK Prasad is no good as the Chairman of Selectors. Why? Not because he is incompetent, but because he has played so little of international cricket.
Prasad no longer has to play, but select, yet he is being judged by the yardstick of how many matches he has played. But his panel has got little or no credit in the way the seniors have been dealt with.
Gautam Gambhir was recalled on a short-term basis in 2016-17 and then was dropped with a clear message. Yuvraj Singh was recalled to the ODI format and then after he struggled, was discarded altogether. Some others like Harbhajan Singh fell by the wayside after being considered for representative matches.
The biggest of them all has to be the way Mahendra Singh Dhoni was dealt with by the panel. Clearly Dhoni delayed his resignation as captain of white ball squads till January 2017. There has always been a hint that his hand was forced by the selection panel.
Now nearly 22 months later, Prasad and his panel have taken another ‘bold’ step, this time with regards to Dhoni again. Only this time the step is a two years too late. Dhoni has been discarded from the T20I squads for the series against West Indies at home and versus Australia Down Under.
However, Dhoni should have been excluded from the T20I format way back in March 2016.
Two Years Too Late
Back then, Dhoni’s Indian squad was muscled out of the ICC World Twenty20 in the semi-final at home in Mumbai by the mighty West Indies power hitters. The next World Twenty20 was not scheduled till late in 2020 in Australia. That was the time when Dhoni should have voluntarily quit the T20s at the international level after of course a nudge from the then selection panel led by Sandeep Patil.
But stature of Dhoni as a cricketer came in the way then. Dhoni should have quit ODI captaincy after the 2015 World Cup semi-final and then quit T20Is altogether in March 2016. Instead he laboured on and is enduring the ignominy of being dropped. We have wasted two years in the process and lost out on an opportunity to groom a player in T20I format.
T20s Are a Different Sport
The problem stems from the fact that Indian cricket ecosystem looks at T20 cricket at international level as an extension of ODIs. The T20 format is dramatically different from ODI cricket now. For far too long India have made the mistake of playing their best ODI players in the T20 format. Considering that India has the best T20 league in IPL, it is quite a surprise that we have never picked our best players for the format, instead gone with our ODI performers. The other major sticking point is the fact that our selection panels have limited tenures and are therefore not able to do legacy planning.
Australia, England, West Indies and Pakistan go with T20 specialist players in their squads, but in India we have always been squeamish about it. We were the original trendsetters of this when we picked a specialist squad in 2007 for the inaugural World Twenty20, in fact led by Dhoni himself.
Boot On The Other Foot
Life has indeed come a full circle for Dhoni he forced out seniors like Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid from the ODI format in 2008. Then in 2012-13 veterans like Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir were dropped from ODI cricket. All because they did not ‘fit in’.
Now the problem is that the fact that Dhoni has been left out of the T20I squads means that almost everyone has given him a free pass till the 2019 World Cup. His struggles in recent months have been completely ignored and it has been assumed that Dhoni is an automatic choice. No one knows how, but it must be because of the stature. However, there are quite a few factors to consider. Can we really afford to have a struggling Dhoni in an already shaky ODI middle-order? It is a huge risk despite all the wealth of experience Dhoni has.
Where Is The Game Time?
Remember, Dhoni has no cricket till January 2019. He will not even turn out for Jharkhand in Ranji Trophy. He had been mandated to play the Vijay Hazare Trophy for Jharkhand by Prasad, but Dhoni turned it down. The one-day domestic season is now over.
The only white ball tournaments left are the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and IPL. So what really is the form on which Dhoni will be selected for the ODIs in Australia and New Zealand? Dhoni anyways abhors warm-up games, so there is little or no game time for two months for one of India’s best ever white ball exponents. Ideally, Dhoni should have volunteered to go to New Zealand with the India A one-day squad to play games there. But we are not known for such creative thinking.
After the New Zealand tour, India will have just five more ODIs at home against Australia before the World Cup. So time for Dhoni to rediscover his touch is running out.
Prasad and his panel have been ‘bold’ thus far, but it will take a lot for them to leave out Dhoni altogether from the ODI format at this late stage. So ideally, there needs to be a plan to get Dhoni enough game time till the World Cup in May-July 2019. There is so little time on hand that Dhoni should himself volunteer to return to whites for Jharkhand in Ranji Trophy. This will help him rediscover form and get into groove.
Future Tense
Dhoni is known to spring surprises, but almost everyone seems convinced that his international exit will be timed with the end of the 2019 World Cup. Unlike the Test match format where he could just pick up the bags and leave, Dhoni cannot do that with ODI cricket because he loves the format a bit too much. Let us all remember Dhoni as a breath of fresh air that he was in 2004-05 and not as the struggling veteran he is in 2018. For that Dhoni himself needs to help and take corrective measures. Remember, Dhoni’s understudy Rishabh Pant is jumping queue quite swiftly in all three formats.
Post script: While we can laud the selectors for leaving out Dhoni from T20Is, the Test squad for Australia represents a bit of disappointment. The recall of Parthiv Patel despite his non-performance with the gloves in South Africa is a major surprise. There cannot be any possible reason why Patel is in when there are younger keepers itching for a chance. The experience theory for Patel’s selection does not quite add up. We have to move beyond the Dhoni-Patel-Dinesh Karthik musical chairs for keeping. Are we not done after 16 years?
(Chandresh Narayanan is a former cricket writer with The Times of India, The Indian Express, ex-Media Officer for ICC and current media manager of Delhi Daredevils. He is also the author of World Cup Heroes, Cricket Editorial consultant, professor and cricket TV commentator.)
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