Not long ago there was a Bengali Gentleman Cricketer called Saurav Ganguly   built up a team formidable enough to challenge the best from out of scratch. He motivated his team admirably well and from the depths of match fixing scandals arose Indian Cricket with a series of wins in India and abroad. In those days. one can not write off the match till the last ball was bowled and such was the inspiration that this man caused his team members that almost every one of them obliged the captain with stellar performances when occasion demanded. Saurav on his part promoted young talent and moulded raw hands in to tough professionals. You ask Bhajji, Viru, Yuvraj, Irfan, Zaheer, Ishant all will vouch for the impeccable conduct of this man on and off the field. Yet as irony would have it, a gentleman ( or was he ) called Greg Chappel was commisioned to coach our team and this trojan horse targeted Ganguly for his alleged lack of form for a brief while and lobbied for his exclusion. Some of Ganguly's own friends fell prey to his games and one of them was Rahul arguably one of the best gifted cricketers of this era and a highly underrated top performer (compare with the adulation that Sachin recieves, Dravid and Laxman have played more memorable knocks for Team India) Rahul was made the captain and alas he presided over the first round exit from world cup. In that world cup I believe it was Ganguly who said the man to watch could be MS Dhoni for his exploits with the bat. He was proved right. The mantle fell on Dhoni who led the team to T-20 triumph.

A captain always leads from the front and motivates ordinary cricketers to perform extra ordinary things. Competitive cricket makes you to fight till the finish. we have witnessed many one dayers and test matches when Saurav was leading. Can you cite any such under Dhoni? Well he had a winning streak but that was largely due to his luck for he is also a man known to have the midas touch.

Dhoni has a long way to go to establish himself as a successful circket captain in the august company of Kapil Dev, Saurav, Mike Brearly, Allan Border, Ricky Ponting, Ranatunga, Imran Khan etc. He should instil confidence and not look forlorn if Zaheer Khan is not fit and Gambhir is not fit. Others are expected to perform. Dhoni slipped opportunties in both the tests which we lost to England and his playing to the gallery by withdrawing appeal against Ian Bell is not going to win matches.