Dropping Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid – Dhoni made crucial and controversial decisions during his tenure as a captain. One of them was dropping the three senior players from the Indian ODI team for the CB series in Australia in 2008. It was a big risk taken by Dhoni as he was still naive in the field of captaincy and demanding such a thing from selectors could have cost him the captaincy, but he initiated the move, which forced selectors to drop Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid from the ODI squad for the CB series 2008.
There is a simple rule in business that higher the risk, higher will be the gain, The same formula worked here as after taking a big risk to drop these two players, the Indian team went on to win the CB series in Australia defeating the hosts in the first of the two finals. It was the highest point in Dhoni’s ODI career at that time. From that day, as a captain, the graph of his impact and popularity, both went up at a fast pace and notched an unmatchable level.