Dhoni calls time on ODI, T20I captaincy

Chandigarh : Mahendra Singh Dhoni, even at the height of his popularity, frequently and insistently said that he’d walk away quietly. “Sir ji, I got lucky that I played for India and became captain, but I’m not going to cling on to this,” he would say. “Whatever I have earned is more than enough. You have to know what’s enough… And I know that. I don’t need a Rolls Royce.”
Dhoni has had enough. He’s walked away twice, twice giving up captainship without fuss — Test captaincy (and Test career) in late 2014, and now ODI-T20I captaincy.
Dhoni, despite his passion for cricket, played the game with a strange sense impassiveness. Remember last year’s match against Bangladesh in the T20 World Cup? Last ball, Bangladesh needed two to win. Dhoni, frequently the brainiest man on the cricket field, had taken his right glove off before the ball was bowled, just in case he had to aim at the wicket if the batsmen ran for a bye. And the batsmen did try to run a bye — Dhoni had foreseen it. He simply ran to the stumps and broke them. India won by a run.
The more remarkable thing was seen then — while Ravindra Jadeja, Shikhar Dhawan, Suresh Raina, Virat Kohli, Hardik Pandya and Yuvraj Singh went crazy with joy, Dhoni remained calm, almost impassive, as if he were a disinterested observer. We’d seen this after the 2007 T20I World Cup and 2011 50-over World Cup finals too — it seems Dhoni really was always focussed more on the process than the results.
Prickly Dhoni
It was a surprise, thus, to see a different Dhoni over the last couple of years. His batting had declined, he wasn’t carrying the team over the line as often as before. There was criticism in the media. The IPL 2013 betting and spot-fixing scandal — in which his team principal, Gurunath Meiyappan, was implicated — put him in a spot and tested his loyalty to Chennai Super Kings and N Srinivasan. His integrity came under a cloud due to his association with CSK and Srinivasan.
Press irked him a bit by asking him again and again if he was going to retire. Did the monk-like Dhoni feel the pressure? He probably did. The result was visible once in Bangladesh in June 2015, when he seemed to bump deliberately into debutant bowler Mustafizur Rahman, who had been at fault too for he was running into the batsmen’s path. The easy-going, generous Dhoni was giving way to a sharper Dhoni.
Change in Indian cricket
Virat Kohli is now the man with the Midas touch. Sport is cruel — Dhoni had the Midas touch not long ago. Now Dhoni himself thinks that his job as leader is done, and that future of Indian cricket lies in the hands of Kohli.
Indian cricket has been struck by strong winds of change. The Supreme Court has removed the top leadership of BCCI and state cricket associations. Some of these officials were cricketers of very modest abilities, some had played a bit of cricket after getting selected through deceit. Most fans and observers have welcomed the removal of BCCI’s leadership, most fans and observers watch the exit of Dhoni with some gloom.