A person with almost everything on his side chooses to quit the game that he loves the most, instead of giving it another try through his hard work. How contradictory it is, when one says I love this, the most, and then he can’t stand firmly to fight for that with himself, to improve and with situations, to make everything in his favor. If you are good at judging, I am sure you would understand that I am talking of the sudden and astonishing retirement of India’s test captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
It is easy to respect the decision of Dhoni to retire from test cricket, but it’s immensely difficult to digest it, since it is hugely unexpected and untimely. While we go through the statements of ‘Captain cool’ it sites, strain to play all formats of game as the main reason for retirement. The question that arises in my and millions of cricket-keeda’s mind is, was the strain so hard to sustain or were there other reasons?
Let us suppose strain is the reason, then I believe this is the poor sportsman spirit shown by this former captain. A strain at just the age of 34 years can’t be too high to leave the format itself.This decision has led to setting up of a wrong example, of giving up, which could have been substituted by setting positive examplethrough overcoming the strain by his hard work(!!Many cricketing fraternity were against the legend Tendulkar during his bad performance, due to his injury, in 2006. Moreover, one of the cricket magazineCricinfo, even wrote ‘ENDULKAR’ but this man through his immense diligence proved critics wrong and went on to score 141*, his 40th ODI century and then, it continued to make innumerable histories!!). Moreover, the strain could have been decrease by leaving the captaincy and concentrating more on performance, it wasn’t too much so as to leave the game itself.
The type of attitude to either be as king, or rather not to be in team, may be given as an assumptions for retirement by his fans. But this can’t be the positive attitude of a sportsperson, a sportsman only care of their performance not their position or power. And if they, then it becomes the sign of atrophy of his sportsman spirit. Ganguly, one of the greatest captain of India(!!In all three formats!!), faced the situation where he was brought down from Bengal Tiger to just a 12th man, but it was his sportsman spirit that sustained him to give all the try required to return to the format and even play under someone whostarted playing international cricket 10 years after this tiger’s debut. Hence there is nothing called playing under, it’s called playing together and the one who can’t accept it, moves away.
The other speculation coming up is, about the internal pressure to Dhoni i.e. inside the dressing room. This is being appended by the new equation formed between the new director of BCCI Mr. Ravi Shastri and the newly energetic and productive captain ViratKohli. A leader needs to set the example, be it through performance or decision, and if he doesn’t, it’s obvious that his status & respect among his follower will be in danger andthat may even lead todispute. The most famous example is of Yunis Khan. (!!In 2009, when Pakistan was playing against New Zealand in UAE, a group of player led by Shoaib Malik went to house of Inzamam-ul-Haq and swore of Quran, not to play under Yunis Khan. !!). But I am sure doing the same by any player to our captain cool, will be inhuman since he has immense contribution in ODI& T20. It requires a lot of ingeniousness and courage to perform so effectual and game changer, as player and captain as well, in the at least two formats.(!! But when I am dealing with retirement in test, I ought not to mingle it with ODIs or T20!!).
The last and the most vital reason that arises is poor performance of Dhoni in last of the few series. But the point to ponder upon is degradation of performance is not a worse thing but continuous degradation is. While we see the track records of Dhoni in the past few matches, it is his continuous bad performance. I am sure nobody will call an average of 33 in 17 inning as good performance. But I believe in spite of bad performance no cricketer would like to quit the game so early, without giving more try, and moreover age wasn’t the factor for him. It’s difficult for a cricketer to believe, that hardly any cricket is left in him, until this menacing thoughts & feelings reaches to its extremes.
An example of this is the second greatest batsman of this era, Ricky Ponting(!!Of course, first one is God-Tendulkar!!). Ponting’s sum of the last 5 inning’s scores were just 18 in the 2011-12 CB Series, which really suggest the period of retirement of the second greatest batsman of Australia, only after Sir Don Bradman. These moves seemed reasonable, since a person took break, when he was satisfied with both his performance during peak and inability to perform further. Almost every cricketer’s retirement seems reasonable but this one of Mr. Dhoni didn’t.
Few may also argue about the value of format one gives among the three, undoubtedly it’s a 5 day format, but in this case rejecting test seems atypical. Test is the real format of cricket and nobody would want to quit the real format of cricket. If playing all formats seemed a strained job, he should have quitted ODI and for that matter even the worthless commercial cricket T20. But there might have some different reasons to keep him glued with. It should have been like a writer, who may quit blogging but will never want to quit writing for editorials. (!!Editorials, like test matches, are more qualitative than blogging!!)
Similarly, test has got the real form of cricket and a cricketer ought to choose the originality not the entertaining and commercialized game.
Although it’s Dhoni’s own decision, but these decision are directly related to each spectator who follows cricket. It’s tough to accept this spirit of Mr. Dhoni, who has always been seen as aperfect spirited cricketer. His decision will always be respected, but there will always be two questions, did he try last time & how could he easily quit the game. It’s alike to ask, how a singer could easily quit singing, a writer writing, a painter painting and a defense officer showing patriotism.
Hope he performs and fulfills the gap of not playing and captaining test by playing and leading in ODI to greatest height (!!World Cup15 is the latest target!!). Let’s hope for the best to come to India under Mr. Dhoni’s leadership in two of the other formats of game.
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Ujjawal
(A disheartened fan of MSD)
