As if the pathetic performance of the Indian bowlers and the shocking decisions by skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni (most glaring being the inclusion of his best friend R P Singh ahead of Praveen Kumar in the playing eleven) in their defeat to Pakistan (Champions Trophy) was not enough, the wicketkeeper shed his gloves and not only decided to become a medium pacer but also picked up a wicket to boot in the inconsequential match against the West Indies.

The first and foremost question many would love to ask the most successful India captain (till today) is what was he trying to prove with his new found love for bowling. Was he trying to prove that he was better than the present lot of medium pacers in the Indian team or was he trying to play a psychological battle with the West Indies batsmen or was he simply running out of ideas and wanted to experiment a la Greg Chappell?

Probably we will never get a straight forward answer from the skipper, who has the knack of rubbing the fourth estate in the wrong side, despite knowing fully well that he is what he is today mainly because of the media and less because of the technically flawed batting and unimaginative captaincy.

What Dhoni should understand is that the national captaincy is not the right platform to promote his close friend's career and the nation should come first even before his own selfish motives.

Even before a ball was bowled in the on-going Champions Trophy, there were media reports by cricket pundits all over the world that the wickets in South Africa at this time of the year would only help slow bowlers more than the really fast bowlers and Praveen Kumar and Amit Mishra would have fitted the bill perfectly.

But our dear captain, who is still trying to be a graduate, either did not read those reports or simply decided to ignore them and went ahead with playing his best chum and ignoring both Praveen and leg spinner Amit Mishra, who bowled beautifully against the Aussies in the rain-marred match.

And against the West Indies it was again the much under estimated Praveen Kumar, who proved his skipper's lack of imagination, by becoming the pick of the Indian bowlers.

His observation that not making it to the Champions Trophy semi-finals was less hurting than the World Twenty20 defeat also sounded a bit hallow simply because winning the Champions Trophy is much more tougher than any of the World Cups as there is no second chance for any team to stage a comeback here while in a World Cup even after losing to a tough opponent, you can still hope to make the next stage as there will be more than one weak team in a given group.

Also his observation about India's decreasing standard on the field (bowling and fielding) are not very serious matters and can be overcome sounded a bit stupid as our poor bowling and fielding standards are a big threat to the team's future performances.

The best of teams know that fielding is the toughest department to improve because all eleven have to be good at it unlike in other departments where a batsman only concentrates on his batting while a bowler on his bowling alone.

So instead of giving press statements Dhoni would be better off in taking proper steps to improve the overall bowling and fielding standards as the old saying 'catches win matches' still holds good in all formats of the game even to this day.

What Dhoni should also understand now is that the captain can only be as good as the team because he is no Mike Brearly to change the fortunes of a team only on his captaincy skills and intelligence alone.