One name that will forever go down in the history of Indian cricket is MS Dhoni. The former Indian captain who won everything for the country, led from the front and always ensured that his players were comfortable playing under him. A lot of the modern stars today owe a lot to Dhoni.
As a person too, MS Dhoni is unselfish and has showed plenty of unselfish acts on the field that prove he always has only his team in mind. Here’s a few of them:
1. Missed his daughter’s birth for India:
Surely one of the most important and proud moments in a person’s life is when their first child is born. While a lot of fathers would love to spend the first seconds of their child’s lives with them, Dhoni had to captain India in a World Cup.
Back in 2015, when Dhoni’s daughter Ziva was born, he was asked about why he decided to miss the moment. He said that the country always came first for him and he would have plenty of time to spend with his daughter. He has shown that he is a hands-on father, having spent a lot of time with Ziva after the World Cup.
2. Gives away the trophy as soon as he wins:
Another very telling aspect about Dhoni is that he would rather see his boys celebrate a win and remain in the sidelines. Whenever India or CSK won a trophy, Dhoni would be presented the award because he is the captain. However, he would immediately give it to a younger member of the team while he stood beaming in the side.
It is a quality that proved Dhoni was never playing for the fame but always understood the importance of his team.
3. Gives away winning runs:
One more warm gesture that Dhoni does during games when he is batting is allowing his teammates to have the opportunity to hit the winning runs. On many occasions, he has allowed the likes of Kohli, Raina and Manish Pandey take over and finish the game off.
He believes in letting the others complete a task that they were longer working on and these moments mean a lot to the batsman being gifted the opportunity to do so and Dhoni is aware of it.
4. Always thinks about the team:
When Dhoni stepped down as Test captain, he was under no real pressure to do so. He was still India’s best wicket-keeper and despite his above average Test record as a captain, he could have still held the post for a couple more years.
Dhoni however, decided to call it a day in Tests on his own terms which means that he knows when the right time is. Even his resignation as the ODI captain came all of a sudden and he knew that Virat Kohli was the right man to lead the squad while he needed to work on his batting in the twilight of his career.
5. Puts himself on the line:
On many occasions, Dhoni has taken bold decisions that have a lot of risk associated with them but he always backs himself up. His decisions to give Joginder Sharma the ball in the T20 Final in 2007, promote himself up the order in the 2011 World Cup final and resting the seniors for better fielders could always backfire, but he let his gut do the talking.
His smart and brave approach coupled with his calm attitude really made him a leader whom everyone could rally around. This is one of the main reasons Dhoni will go down as an all-time legend of the game.
By Rohit Nair
