Team India needs a new skipper
Sadagopan Ramesh
A defensive captain can only get a team up to a certain point in Test cricket. M.S. Dhoni’s methods were good enough against teams that lacked the wherewithal to play in Indian conditions but he has come a cropper against tougher sides on good cricket wickets abroad. To be fair, Dhoni did his best but the Test team is in dire need of fresh ideas and it’s time for a change in leadership.

Dhoni’s style of captaincy suited the team in limited overs cricket perfectly. The biggest tactic in one-dayers is to check the run flow and not necessarily look for wickets all the time. Any target set by the opposition in the sub-continent was chased down by a powerful top order, a combination that made Dhoni’s task easier. What is hurting the captain now is his personal batting form in Tests, as also his wicket-keeping which was seen to be well below par in England.
As an ODI batsman, Dhoni is one of the best in the world who is a confident and clinical finisher as well. But in the longer version his technique (by his own acceptance) stands exposed and No. 7 is a vital slot against the second new ball. As skipper, he has the habit of staying back and waiting for things to happen. This will never help in Tests as we have to look at picking up 20 wickets to win.
I hear that the selection committee has been contemplating a change in guard for some time now. The World Cup win ensured Dhoni got an extended run as Test captain but with the whitewash in England and the poor show against Australia, it will only be wise to look at an alternative leader. What could work in favour of Dhoni for a while more is that there is no away series for India for a year.
I know the media has been having a field day but the selectors cannot be blamed for the debacle in Australia. The best possible squad was sent. In England Dhoni could point to the injuries to key players but there was no such concern in the
ongoing tour. It is a clear case of mismanagement and lack of focus and direction.
There is hope for this Indian side once the fact is accepted that things are not quite in place as they used to be. All the riches in the world cannot cover up for lack of new ideas and no team can go forward if it is stuck in old and repetitive thoughts. The change has to come from the top.
In India, selection and team composition are usually dictated by external forces. Brands endorsed by a player/captain have notoriously had a say in selection matters. This has to end. Sacking Dhoni as Test skipper might not be a popular decision. Things have, however, come to a stage where his ideas have grown old and the team needs a new captain.

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Dhoni alone is not to blame
Ajit Wadekar
There’s no question that Indian cricket is at its lowest ebb. In my many years of playing and watching cricket, I’ve never seen any Indian team struggle playing away as much the current lot. There’s no single answer to explain why this is happening. When a clutch of players collectively underperform for a reasonably long period of time, it’s always because of multiple factors, never just one. It is because of this, I feel, that it would be imprudent to blame the skipper alone for seven consecutive away defeats.
It’s public knowledge that Dhoni isn’t a great performing batsman away from the sub-continent. His Test average outside India is half of what it is back home, and when he was blooded into the team and then subsequently made the captain, the decisions were taken primarily on the basis of his skills in the shorter versions of the game — and his attitude. Even though he has improved his defensive technique by several notches, did anyone expect him to become a Dravid?
He is an honest trier — I know he must be working very hard on his game at the nets, but playing on fast bouncy pitches in Australia is not easy, especially against a quality bowling line-up. He’s performed as badly as the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, V.V.S Laxman and Rahul Dravid, all of whom have considerable amount of experience of Australian conditions and are technically more adept than Dhoni. I don’t see any reason why all the blame should fall on Dhoni alone. He’s only as guilty as his seniors.
We’ve been critical of Dhoni’s captaincy, calling him overly defensive. The truth is we’ve been calling all Indian captains in the last two decades or so defensive, and it’s because of a good reason. When his team is not able enough to stand up to the opposition, any skipper would resort to defensive measures. Dhoni, with his bowlers being whacked around, has been forced to spread the field. Remember Australia’s tour to India in 2008-09 when the then Australia skipper, Ricky Ponting, did the same, despite having Brett Lee and Mitchell Johnson in the attack? Now, how do you fix this? Taking a cue from Australia would be a start. They have slowly infused youth into a side that was ageing rapidly and under- performing. It meant that they had to bear a lot of mocking from the cricketing world, especially because of the kind of quality cricket they had been dishing out in the last decade.
But they continued to invest in the future, and they are now reaping the fruits of it. India should follow the same route. Fresh legs can take India ahead. Blindly dropping a double World Cup-winning captain and expecting the team to suddenly rise like a phoenix after that will just not work. It will probably make things worse if Dhoni is dethroned from Test captaincy.