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Trouble on the road

Much is being made of the fact that Mahendra Singh Dhoni now has the highest number of overseas losses amongst Indian captains after Auckland. If Christian Ryan's fantasy came true and the fans had their way, he would have been sacked long ago and one of Kohli/Rohit/Pujara made skipper and that alone would have turned India's fortunes. At the risk of coming across as a Dhoni apologist, that's just pure balderdash in my opinion.

First the stats. Dhoni's away win loss ratio is still a good deal better than many captains of the past and of those above him, Wadekar and Kapil Dev's two wins each came in the same year (1971 and 1986 respectively) and they lost the captaincy soon after as losses started to mount. Six of Ganguly's wins came against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe (vs just one for Dhoni) leaving Dravid as the only captain who's undisputedly done better. India (and Dhoni) have taken a severe beating since 2011 and among international captains (with 8 or more away matches) in that period, Dhoni does better than Sammy only whether in terms of wins or win/loss ratio. That is admittedly quite damning and in most other eras, an Indian skipper would not have survived with such a record. If you look at the loss ratio though (ie % of matches lost), Dhoni and India are much better (expectedly) than the West Indies and New Zealand and not too much worse than Pakistan and England. Moreover, a captain is only as good as his team and given that India average 25.5 with the bat (eighth lowest out of ten teams) and 41.86 with the ball, its no wonder they're struggling. Its revealing though that South Africa are the only team that have an away batting average better than their bowling average. Most teams these days struggle away and India are just no different. Dhoni's also been "lucky" (though I'm sure he'd have swapped a few wins for that luck) that its coincided with the retirement of the big four and a complete loss of form for Sehwag and Gambhir, meaning that he's been the only real choice to lead the rebuilding of the side.

And while the results haven't started to turn around quite yet with this young team, a bit of patience is needed and the signs are certainly there that they will grow into a fighting outfit. In just three matches so far, they've already made more than 350 in an innings twice (which is twice as many times as they managed in eight matches against England and Australia in 2011/12) and have scored three hundreds (vs four in those eight matches) with three more individual scores of 95+. The bowling still lags as they've conceded 400+ in three innings out of five and a bit but they have also bowled SA out for under 250 and NZ for 105. At this formative stage in their careers, the likes of Kohli, Pujara, and Rohit Sharma don't really need the added burden of leading the side and given Dhoni's experience of having played over 80 games, the team needs him more than ever.

This is not to say that Dhoni's decisions and his overall approach at times don't leave much to be desired. As a modern day captain he takes the defensive option once too often for my liking and while you could blame that partly on the resources at his disposal, he also comes across as just being more comfortable with that approach. Playing Jadeja ahead of Ashwin is also a funny decision and I would really like Amit Mishra in this side as the sole spinner for overseas games and slot in Bhuvneshwar Kumar ahead of the ageing Zaheer. Dhoni's batting too needs to deliver and its a bit of an embarrassment that a man of his abilities hasn't scored a hundred outside the subcontinent. None of this is likely to change overnight but a strong performance in windy Wellington over the next few days would be a great start.
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