M S Dhoni: Another Indian March

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Sandeep Dwivedi: Mar 09 2013, 16:38 IST

Tags: M S Dhoni | Sourav Ganguly | Cricket News

Last month brought back memories of a gloomy February that Indian cricket endured a dozen years back. And, just as in 2001, a sunny March has followed. Back then, Sourav Ganguly, roughly the same age that M S Dhoni is today, was a young captain dealing with pressure, responsibility and a receding hairline. Steve Waugh was at the door and Ganguly wasn’t quite battle ready. His team didn’t have stable openers or a settled bowling combination. In many ways, he wasn’t ideally placed to bring optimism back into the game — a task unfairly expected of him in the post-match-fixing era. Those were tough times for cricket. It had very few believers left.

In February 2013, faith among fans was low. The whitewash in the away tournaments against Australia and England had been followed by the home defeat to England. Dhoni’s on-field problems were graver than Ganguly’s. The present-day middle order didn’t have the same quality or experience as the one in 2001. Openers, spinners or pacers; no department had that one go-to man. Like Ganguly, Dhoni was grappling with off-field distractions that affected his image. He and other young stars flush with IPL riches were being written off as a frivolous, materialistic generation that had no time for Test cricket.

March 14, 2001, saw V.V.S. Laxman score 281, an innings so dazzling that it would lift the darkness from Indian cricket and be the beacon for the incredible decade that followed. Exactly 12 years to the day, India will step out

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