Not many captains have suffered an 8-0 loss in consecutive Tests overseas and survived. Rarer is to find an Indian captain with a series loss at home. Mahendra Singh Dhoni has both the black dots on his resumé
Post the 2011 World Cup triumph, under MS Dhoni’s leadership, Team India has beaten Australia, West Indies (twice) and New Zealand in Tests. All of these victories have come at home. While touring, the team suffered an embarrassing 10 defeats in 15 Tests. In doing so, Dhoni became the Indian captain with the worst overseas record, 11 losses in 23 Tests led overseas, 10 of them in the last three seasons. To call this an abysmal record is an understatement.
After the recent 1-0 losses in both South Africa and New Zealand, there has been a clamour for Dhoni’s head as the Test captain. While his poor record cannot be denied, there is a need for perspective here. Especially in the light that the much-talked-about transition in Indian cricket has just about come to an end, and that this is a very young team on a steep learning curve pertinently when touring overseas.
These last two series need to be viewed as a separate chapter, totally different from what the Indian team endured during the 8-0 embarrassment. Only three players from this current Test squad — Dhoni himself, Ishant Sharma and Zaheer Khan — were part of the 4-0 defeat in England (2011). Only three others —Virat Kohli, R Ashwin and Wriddhiman Saha — played in the subsequent 4-0 loss in Australia (2011-12). Rohit Sharma was in the squad Down Under but didn’t play a single Test.
The other big difference from then to now, of course, is that Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS laxman are all gone, while Harbhajan Singh, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir and Yuvraj Singh have been sidelined. Zaheer seems to be on the last stretch of his Test career.
This squad then — along with the players named above — becomes the team for the future and it is essential that their umbilical cord from the team of two-years-past be cut. Given how raw they are in terms of experience of playing overseas, they have more in common with the Indian team of the late 1990s under Tendulkar, wherein Dravid, laxman and Sourav Ganguly were first making their bones. As such, if these four Tests in South Africa and New Zealand are seen independent of what happened in 2011-12, there has been some marked improvement.
India lost these two series because of two batting failures — first, on the last day of the Durban Test and second, in the first innings of the Auckland Test. Yet, if we gaze past the 1-0 score-lines and dig deeper, in three of these four Tests, at Johannesburg, Auckland and Wellington, India got into a position of advantage from where the finish line was in sight. They just failed to convert their chances and ended up losing one and drawing two of these matches. The same cannot be said about any of those eight Tests lost in England and Australia.
Batting has been India’s traditional strength in Test cricket and its failures, especially of a young line-up overseas, cannot be pinned on the captain’s shoulders. Moving on then, in recent years, Indian bowlers have struggled on foreign pitches when they turn out to be flat-decks. Using this weakness, two partnerships hurt India at Johannesburg and Wellington. The first when Faf du Plessis and AB de Villiers denied them, and the second when Brendon McCullum and BJ Watling stepped it up a notch further.
The big problem with Indian cricket’s billion fans is that they cannot see past their own team’s performance, in either success or failure. They failed to appreciate the patience of du Plessis and that de Villiers is arguably the best batsman in the world today, irrespective of the format. Then, they didn’t applaud McCullum’s top-notch triple hundred enough as well as forgot to notice Watling’s discipline that he didn’t present a single half-chance to the bowlers or fielders.
Poor bowling and lack of penetration in the attack, poor fielding and dropped catches, are part and parcel of the game. But can a captain alone be held responsible for thisIJ What he can, and should, be blamed for is letting the game meander away. Perhaps that is the only grouse against Dhoni’s leadership.
During those two afore-mentioned partnerships, as also on umpteen other occasions, the Indian captain ran out of ideas. When this happens, he usually spreads the field when his attacking ploys don’t work quickly enough. He looks to contain runs. He makes incomprehensible bowling changes that might work in limited-overs cricket but they seldom do in Tests. Does that make him a defensive captain thoughIJ If the argument is that an aggressive batsman like Kohli will make for an aggressive captain, does that mean Dhoni is a defensive batsmanIJ
The answer to both these questions is, most vehemently, no. Instead, Dhoni is a stubborn captain. He has a fixed bag of tricks, one which he borrows from the ODI and T20 arena, and hopes for them to work in the longer format of the game. When that fails, he waits for things to happen. He is an inflexible captain when it comes to team selection, and that compounds things even more.
More than anything else, when it comes to Test cricket, he is a restrictive captain, limited even. A captain may or may not be as good as his team. Similarly, he may or may not be as good as a player he is.
Sadly for Dhoni, this latter aspect rings out to be especially true in Test matches overseas, because he is a restricted/limited batsman-keeper in overseas conditions.
Talking statistics, if we roll back the years, Ganguly is the Indian captain with the best overseas record of 12 wins. Five of these came in the subcontinent though, while four others were recorded in Zimbabwe. West Indies, England and Australia were his other three conquests. Dravid has five overseas wins, in Bangladesh, Pakistan, South Africa, West Indies and England.
Going further back, Tiger Pataudi had three overseas wins, all of them in New Zealand. Bishen Bedi also had three wins to his credit, two in Australia and one in West Indies. Ajit Wadekar had two wins, in West Indies and England.
In comparison, Dhoni stands somewhere in the middle of this ladder with five overseas wins in New Zealand, Sri lanka, Bangladesh, South Africa and West Indies. Where he really pales though is in terms of bowling resources irrespective of conditions, lacking even a single wicket-taking bowler at his prime.
Meanwhile, at different times in their captaincy stints, Ganguly and Dravid enjoyed the support of Javagal Srinath, Zaheer Khan, Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh, all quality bowlers at their respective peaks. All those victories that stand as bright markers in Indian cricket history from the late 60s to the late 70s came when the famed Indian spin quartet comprising Bedi, E Prasanna, B Chandrasekhar and S Venkataraghavan, was at the height of its prowess.
As such, no captain — old or new — can cure India’s weakness with its bowling and increase penetration of its attack. Sure, under such limitations, you need an imaginative captain, but Dhoni was never one. He was always, and is, an instinctive captain. Is it time to move on then, theoretically in search of a more proactive oneIJ
In 2012-13, in the aftermath of India’s loss to England at home, there wasn’t a keen replacement available for Dhoni as Test captain. Today there is. Kohli has grown in stature these last two years, both as a batsman and as a member of the team.
If Kohli is indeed made captain at this juncture, it will only be for Tests. With less than a year to go for the 2015 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, Dhoni cannot be touched in the limited-overs format. Indian cricket has never been too comfortable with the idea of split captaincy and there is only one example of it, with Kumble and Dhoni exchanging hats in 2007-08.
Making Kohli Test captain will be another half-baked instance then, akin to handing Tendulkar captaincy in 1996-97 when he led the side to South Africa and West Indies. The selectors back then weren’t misguided in naming Tendulkar skipper, given his ever-growing stature. However, it only brought disastrous results. In the current scenario too, it will only hamper the learning curve this team-of-the-future has set out upon.
Furthermore, with a young batting line-up and a misfiring bowling attack, will an inexperienced Kohli be able to provide any better results later this year in England and Australia than an experienced DhoniIJ Who is to sayIJ
The most important question though is this. Is it fair to hand Kohli the leadership reins just when he stands at the cusp of greatness as a batsmanIJ
Instead, let us wait for the 2015 World Cup to pass, when Indian cricket will have no choice but to move on from the present leadership. Till then, let us allow Kohli to become the batsman he is destined to become and give Dhoni nine more Tests. It is the least he has earned.
The writer is the author of Skipper: A Definitive Account of India'’s Greatest Captains