Why MS Dhoni leapfrogged senior players as India captain? Former selector reveals

Add as a preferred source on Google

Former India captain MS Dhoni is arguably the best captain who donned the national team colours across all formats, especially in the limited-overs formats.

MS Dhoni's supreme captaincy skills led India to three ICC trophies, which makes him the solitary captain with more than one ICC trophy wins as an India captain.

But his arrival in captaincy was a decision that was much debated in the first instances. MS Dhoni arrived in Team India's scheme of things in 2004, and within three years, he was fast-paced to lead the Indian team. His first assignment came in the 2007 T20 World Cup when the selectors chose the Jharkhand cricketer to lead the Indian team.

In that tournament, seniors like Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar decided to opt out and Dhoni was given the responsibility to lead a young India squad. But even in that team, there were players who were more senior in terms of their international team journey than Dhoni.

Players like Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh came into the India scene much earlier than Dhoni, but the wicketkeeper-batter was preferred ahead of them. But what was the reason behind that? What made the selectors rest their laurels on a comparatively younger player?

Former Indian team selector Bhupinder Singh Sr. has recently revealed the reason. In an interview with Hindustan Times, Singh said Dhoni's name had positive feedback from the other players, who gave high numbers to Dhoni's approach to the game and body language.

"Apart from being an automatic choice in the team, you look at the player's cricketing acumen, body language, ability to lead from the front and man management skills. We saw Dhoni's approach to the game, body language, how he spoke to others; we got a positive feedback," Singh said.

Under Dhoni, India won the T20 World Cup in 2007, and then went on to win the ODI World Cup in 2011. India had their third ICC success a couple of years later in 2013 when they won the Champions Trophy.

India have had Virat Kohli an Rohit Sharma as captain since but haven't won any ICC trophy since. They recently played two WTC Finals but ended up losing both finals in 2021 and 2023, against New Zealand and Australia respectively.