Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Captain Cool!!!

Hello Readers!!!

I’m back with an other Inspiring story. It’s all about how a small town guy conquered the Cricketing world. Mahendra Singh Dhoni, better known as Dhoni. His fans call him MSD, Mahi. The name itself is enough for the other teams playing against Team India to lose hope when he is batting. He is the one of the hardest hitter of cricket ball. His dedication towards the game, responsibility towards his country when he on National Duty and being cool in tough situations made him unique from the other players. Encouraged many youngsters under his captaincy, guided them to become good players. Currently he might not be the captain of the proud Indian Cricket team but he is still bearing the responsibility on his shoulders. No doubt he is the hero our team and every individual in India is proud of him.

Early Life:

Mahendra Singh Dhoni was born on July 7, 1981 at Ranchi, Jharkhand to Pan Singh and Devki Devi. He has an elder brother, Narendra Singh Dhoni, who is a politician, and a sister, Jayanti Gupta, who is a teacher. He did his schooling at DAV Jawahar Vidya Mandir where he was keenly interested in football and badminton but not in cricket. He was the goalkeeper of his football team and was able to play for the district and state level. But on the insistence of his football coach, he tried out to play cricket.

He was able to perform wicket keeping especially well which allowed him entry into a local cricket club called the Commando cricket club where he played from 1995-1998. In the 1997/98 season, his superb performances in the Vinoo Mankad Under-16 Championship attracted the selector’s eye.

He was selected to the Bihar U-19 squad the very next season. His improved batting and keeping performances led him to be selected to the Bihar Ranji Trophy squad for the 1999/00 season. He made his debut against the Assam team by scoring an unbeaten score of 68.

He scored his first century the next season but was only able to score at a average of around 40 per game by the 2003 season. In 2003, he was selected to the India A team which went to tour Kenya to play a tri-series tournament with Pakistan A as the third team. In the series he scored 362 runs at an average of 72.40 with back to back centuries against Pakistan.

On the back of his sterling performances in domestic competitions and international tours, he was given a place in the ODI squad for the tour to Bangladesh in 2004/05. On his debut he was run out for a duck but in his 5th ODI match against Pakistan in Visakhapatnam, he played a match winning innings and scored 148 off 123 balls. With this performance he had recorded the highest score at that time by an Indian wicket keeper and  cemented his place in the side.

In November 2005, while chasing a stiff target of 299, he scored 183 off 145balls to take India to victory. He won the ‘Man of that Series’ award for top scoring in the tournament with 346 runs. In the 2007 World Cup he could only score 29 runs in the 3 matches with two ducks which contributed to the knockout in the group stages. Again Dhoni bounced back with impressive performances which led him to be made the captain of the Indian T20 squad in September 2007. He immediately made impact as he led the team to win the inaugural World Cup T20 in South Africa.

Career & Captaincy:

He was given the responsibility of Captain for Team India in 2007 for World T20 cup in South Africa. Against all the odds with his exceptional skills as a captain, came back with the first inaugural T20 World Cup making India proud across the World. He took over the captaincy from Rahul Dravid for ODI team in 2007 and later he even became the Test team Captain in 2008. In 2009, he scored 1198 runs in 24 innings at an average of 70.43 to be the highest scorer of the year in ODI’s. After this he never looked back, Everything turned gold with his touch. He became the trophy collector Team India. His Unique style of captaincy, Bowling changes, Field setup, Batting order and player selections took Indian team to a new level which no one have expected. He made all the mouths shut with his bat and captaincy. Within no time he made India as the No.1 test team which was unexpected. As a wicket keeper batsman, he has some highlights in the batting areas as well. His knock of 183 not out is the highest any cricketer has ever made in the second innings of an ODI.  He even became No. 1 in the world in batting with an outstanding average.

Many controversies came into lime light when he led Indian team, but as usual he used to keep quite. His only aim was to collect 50 overs ODI World Cup for our country. He started building the ODI team for India as strong as never before in our history. Soon he succeeded with his skills. Team started to learn new things from other cricketing nations. Players started to field as never before. He built his own core team to play against any nation in the world. Every other nation started feeling hard to play against India both in home and foreign conditions. And by now he was ready to chase his dream of life, the World Cup 2011. On 2nd of April India became the world champions by beating Sri Lanka in the finals. Dhoni with his unbeaten score of 91 had made us to lift the World cup. Dhoni has been exceptional and outstanding on the night of the final. He had gifted our nation with the most  awaited ICC’s most prestigious trophy after 28 long years. He even led India to to capture the Champions trophy in 2013. This made him much more unique than any other captain. He is the only captain in the world to win all the ICC Trophies.

In June 2013, he was reported to be the 16th highest paid sportsman in the world with yearly earnings of $31 million. He is one of the most successful Indian sportsmen that the world has ever seen.

Dhoni is the successful captain that India ever had. He led India to 27 Test match victories in 60 Tests and 107 ODI wins in 194 ODIs as a captain. He captained 70 T20 matches and he had 40 wins in his kitty. He is the only one of three people in the world to have captained their teams for more than 300 ODIs. He currently ranks third after Ricky Ponting and Stephen Fleming. In the 2014-15 season, he declared his retirement from test cricket.

On 4th January, 2017, Dhoni stepped down as captain of India’s limited-overs teams ahead of the ODIs and T20Is against England. However, he is still available as a wicketkeeper-batsman. He took the decision in order to give the younger players a chance to lead the side to the next level. He will definitely be remembered as one of the most successful Indian captains in the history of the sport.

This is just a gist of the story of this great man. If you ask me to write the complete story of this super star, it would take months to just write about his captaincy skills. Hope you like this Inspirational story of my favourite super star and my hero of all time.

Love you Mahi!!! You made us Proud.