MS Dhoni has been arguably India’s most successful captain across all the formats. Be it T20 World Cup, 50 Over World Cup or the ICC Champions Trophy – under his captaincy India have won all the major ICC tournaments. It was under his captaincy, India became the number one Test team.
Despite these amazing achievements, Dhoni started to receive severe criticism in the recent past from both the fans and former cricketers. The only reason behind this outrage is simply India’s poor overseas performance.
A Dhoni fan would think such criticism for a captain who has given so much to cheer for this country is not at all appreciable but if we just go through the history of Indian cricket, Dhoni is not the first one to face this unwanted chin music. India rarely had a captain who left captaincy on his own without facing any media or fan backlash. As we all know an Indian cricket captain’s job is regarded as the toughest job in the country after that of the Prime Minister, so it’s inevitable Dhoni has to face the chin music.
Here we look at 5 former captains whose tenure ended abruptly due to various reasons ranging from poor form, board politics and match-fixing charges among others. But some of these players continued their national career without the burden of captaincy.