After nearly a decade of watching him guide India through thick and thin, watching Mahendra Singh Dhoni as just a wicket-keeper batsman now will be a touch odd for Indian fans. When Dhoni commenced his own legacy in 2007, very few expected him to garner the success which he eventually did over the years. Year after year, he did something massively extraordinary as a leader and a devastating wicket-keeper batsman.
The decision to hand over the reins of the team to another gem of a leader, Virat Kohli, wouldn’t have been an easy one for Dhoni surely. This was the very team which he constructed right from the basics. He was the very individual, who gave this dynamic ODI team a new look from 2013, as he took a couple of sensational decisions. One of those was to let Rohit Sharma play freely as an opener, a move that has enriched India’s batting resources colossally.
From a personal front however, the last two to three years haven’t been as easy for Dhoni. There have been numerous bumps and glitches in the way, such as an embarrassing series defeat to Bangladesh and a closely fought series loss to South Africa at home. Despite the team performing well, the eventual result of the ODI series in Australia reflected a 4-1 loss for the Men in Blue.
The worrying aspect for Dhoni wasn’t alone the way in which the results were going. The fact that he himself struggled miserably with the bat was a massive hurdle that dented him. Stats alone are enough to depict how poor Dhoni was in the recent past. With a derelict batting average of just 27.8 in 2016, and just one score in excess of 50, the Jharkhand marauder was well aware that he needed to take a step that could possibly pull him out from this mess. The fact that he scored his last international century in late 2013 doesn’t help either. The decision to quit captaincy is now being perceived as one such move by Dhoni.