It was during Sourav Ganguly’s captaincy that India found players like Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan. But little did we know that Sourav Ganguly had a major hand in making MS Dhoni the batsman he is right now. Dhoni became India’s captain 2007 and then led India to glory in three ICC tournaments.
But according to Sehwag who in a recent tv show revealed that it was Sourav Ganguly who sacrificed his batting position and promoted MS Dhoni at the number three position. Ganguly had earlier relinquished his opening spot for Sehwag and then surrendered his place for MS Dhoni. Sehwag said not every captain does it and promotes a young player.
Dhoni rose to fame when he scored 148 and 183 batting at number three position in the batting order. Both the innings came within a year of his debut. Sehwag said:
“We were experimenting with the batting order at that time. We decided that if we get a good opening partnership then Sourav Ganguly would come at No.3 but if we had a bad opening stand then we would send pinch hitters like Irfan Pathan or Dhoni to accelerate the scoring rate.
“Ganguly at that time decided to give Dhoni a chance at No.3 for three or four matches. There are very few captains who would first give away his own batting spot for Virender Sehwag and then his set spot of No.3 for Dhoni. Had Dada (Ganguly) not done that, Dhoni would not have become such a great player. Ganguly always believed in giving chances to new players.”
Later on in his career, Dhoni batted down the order, and Sehwag gave credit to Rahul Dravid for this decision as he believes that it was Dravid’s contribution to making Dhoni the best finisher. He said:
“During Rahul Dravid’s captaincy, Dhoni got the role of a finisher. He got out a couple of times playing a bad shot and he was also reprimanded by Dravid during one instance. But from that instance, he completely changed his approach and became a very good finisher. The kind of partnerships he had with Yuvraj Singh are memorable.”