Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Is MSD better than DADA????!!!!!

Indian cricket team is in its victorious path. We are No 1 in test ranking for the first time. This post has nothing to tell about our journey to No 1 position. But I’m trying to figure out ‘Who is the best captain? MSD or DADA’. Yes, I had a great fight with some of my friends regarding this. But I’m the only one who supported MSD.

While discussing …. no debating…… sorry sorry….. while fighting on this topic I heard a lot of rubbish things against MSD like ‘He is winning because of luck’ , ‘He is coming as a lower order batsman’ , ‘He is not a good wicket keeper’ , ‘He has changed his game’ , ‘He is not performing but only others in the team are performing’ and finally ‘His team is very much stronger than DADA’s team’. Are this all valid reasons against his captaincy?. I could only laugh after hearing all these non-sense.
 Name Matches Won Lost Drawn Win %
Ganguly 49 21 42.8
MS Dhoni 18 12 2 4 66.67

42.8 might look like a very good winning percentage. But in this 21 wins 6 were against minnows(Bangladesh –3 and Zimbabwe- 3). Now the winning percentage goes down to 37.5. If we do the same thing for MSD , his winning % will go down to 64.7. To my knowledge 37.5 is much lower than 64.7 (How about you?).

The next thing they say about Ganguly is that he is the one who made India to win test in overseas. Yes he won 4 overseas test series. But the interesting truth is that 2 against Bangladesh and 1 against Zimbabwe. The win against Pakistan is really a good win. In the mean while he lost 4 overseas test series. Even Dhoni have 2 overseas victories in this short duration(NZ-1,Ban-1).

Now comes the most important thing they (supporters) tell about Ganguly – his win against Australia in 2003(Series drawn). Is this the reason why they call him the best captain? Then we should include the new contender into the list ‘Sunil Gavaskar’ who had done the same thing in 1980. The supporters who raise their collars for this achievement should know that Ganguly lost the home test series(1-2) against Australia in the very next year.

The final thing – ‘MSD’s team is better than Ganguly’s team’ . But is it true?. Let us take a look at the team

Sachin, Ganguly, Dravid, Laxman, Sehwag, Srinath, Kumble, Nehra and Zaheer were in the Ganguly’s team.

The new team have Ohja for Kumble , Ghambir for Ganguly, Ishant for Srinath and Dhoni for Patel.
Now can you tell which is the stronger team?

Now let me deal with the negatives against MSD. ‘Luck favours Dhoni’. Yes luck favoured Dhoni in 50 ODI wins, 20 T20 wins and 12 test wins. He is the fastest Indian captain to reach 50 wins.

‘He is not a very good batsman’. Yes, he is a worst batsman who tops ICC ranking list for past 3 or 4 months with an average of 50.28.

As a wicket keeper he have 387 dismissals in his record.

‘He is coming as a lower order batsman’. This is the thing which I like about Dhoni. He is not playing for him but for his team. Is it a wiser decision to send Raina or Yuvraj to his position. But Dada did a blunder while dealing with such a situation. He came as opener even when is in very bad form instead of sending Sehwag. If you mistake that Dhoni cannot perform as higher order batsman then take a look at this
Position Avg 50s 100s
2 49 1 0
3 82.75 6 2
4 81.55 8 1
5 52.96 6 3
6 38.75 9 0
7 39.26 4 1

I gave a lot of information about Ganguly and Dhoni but only now an important doubt raises in my mind – ‘How will they select a good captain?’ - By their performance during captaincy period or by their team winning records or by some other criteria.

If it is by his individual performance during his captaincy then MSD(avg 71) is in first position followed by Sachin, Gavaskar and Dravid. If it is by his teams performance then again Dhoni tops the list with 66.6% of winning record. Then how some idiots are supporting  Ganguly.

4 comments:

MuthuKumar said...

That was really a great post. My rating for it would be 5(really superb) . U have put in lot of hard works in reading those statistics.
But we idiots want to convey that there is something apart from all these statistics in captaincy.
The journey to the top begun long back under dadas captaincy. No.1 test ranking didnt come overnight after M.S. took over as captain.
Ganguly is solely responsible for the status which indian cricket team is enjoying right now.
He took over the captaincy of indian cricket team during hard times, When the face of indian cricket team was torne apart by the match fixing scandals which rock the cricketing world
India was not a great cricketing nation then, we used to depend on Sachin,Ganguly and Dravid to win matches.even these three fail at times then.
We had world class players but we never made a world class team. We never won matches abroad. Dada introduced fresh bloods into the team, who are the superstars of indian cricket now.
( Sehwag,Yuvaraj,Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer khan, Ashis nehra, Irfan Pathan & even Dhoni himself was introduced during Dada's captaincy.
Winning with these players and commenting that MSD is the Best captain is a crap..((( un aadhangam enakku puriyudhu adhukkandi ellam dhoni thaan best nu
othukka mudiyadhu))). Captaincy is not all about winning with resources u have, its about grooming players and leading from the front and showing them the way which
Dada did sucessfully and dhoni is struggling to do the same with youngsters in the team right now( Raviiiindra jadeja, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Amit Mishra,Laxmi Balaji Ishant Sharma,
Sreesanth, Rp Singh ,Ishant Sharma, and the list goes on...) .Having all these talented players and failing to utilize shows how great a captain is Dhoni..A few years back india
looked like having a potential pace attack in the world, but now Msd is fielding Zaheer ,Bhajji & Nehra who were introduced by Ganguly. Where did MSD captaincy skills go!!!!
Captaincy is not all about winning matches and statistics, its about mentoring players and inducing confidence in them..Which dhoni fails to do with youngsters.
Then how the hell people as genious as u are call MS Dhoni the best captain of India..Indian cricket teeam in the Safe hands BUT NOT IN THE BEST HANDS!!!!.DHONI IS JUST A PRAGMATIC CAPTAIN

TSD | TechShot Digital said...

Dhoni is a real life Hero!

Selva Kumar R said...

@MuthuKumar

Thank you for your rating. Yes some world class players were introduced during Ganguly's captaincy. He replaced Kumble with Bhajji. Excellent decision. Is this a proper replacement. Irfan was a world class player with great potential. But his talents were wasted and finally he was dropped from the team. Same end for Nehra too. But he came back during MSD's captaincy. MSD not using Indian youngsters!!!! can't understand .... Are you kidding?... Kohli helped us win this ODI. Ishant is playing in the team and he is responsible for our first test win(this series). He gave Pujara an excellent chance in second innings in a crucial situation. He introduced our opener Vijay. Balaji (:p) !!! do you think he is eligible to come into our team. This is not our college team ya....ha ha ha....If you want him to give a chance to all those players(in ur list) then a team should have 30 players but unfortunately it is not allowed. Moreover politics came into cricket because of Ganguly and Dalmia. The senior-junior ego problem also raised during his captaincy. ‘India is not a world class team during 2000!!!’ Unacceptable.... Only KapilDev can claim that he took the underdog team to world class status. No one else can tell that. You have mentioned only a few players who made their debut during Ganguly’s captaincy. What happened to Murali Karthik, Dinesh Karthik, Patel and a lot more who made their debuts during Ganguly's captaincy. Your list also have some mistakes...... Bhajji and Sehwag made their debut during Azharuddin and Jadeja’s captaincy. Dhoni during Dravid’s captaincy.

Selva Kumar R said...

@MuthuKumar

This is the list of players who made their debuts during Ganguly's captaincy

Hemang Badani, Sameer Dighe, Sridharan Sriram, Vijay Dahiya, Amit Bhandari, Reetinder Singh sodhi, Shiv Sundar Das, Deep Das Gupta, Ajay Ratra, Sanjay Bangar, Sarandeep Singh, Tinu Yahannan, Jai Yadav, Aavishkar Salvi, Abhijit Khale, Rohan Gavaskar, Johinader Sharma, Amit Mishra, Ghambir, Dinesh Mongia.

How effectively did Ganguly used these players. Excellent cricket within Ghambir came to life only in MSD's captaincy.