MS Dhoni caps unique century of wins

On this seemingly never-ending tour of Australia, now 117 days and counting, MS Dhoni has copped enough flak. After presiding over — jointly, of course — another Test series loss on foreign soil, he ran out of reasons to explain the team's listless performance in the tri-series. A week-long break, however, worked wonders for him and the boys. That's when we realised that the word 'recharge' had to do with more than just cellphones.

The manner in which Dhoni has led his troops to a scarcely believable seventh straight win in this World Cup evokes awe. You've got to salute the man for getting it right more often than not. On Thursday, he crossed another milestone. Well, '100' is not a digit you would usually associate with Dhoni. There are other claimants to that magic number. But, seriously, 100 ODI wins as a captain? That's a huge achievement. And guess what, he didn't even know of it! Only Aussies Ricky Ponting (167) and Allan Border (107) have more.

Dhoni doesn't care about records. That's another rarity in an utterly competitive world. When asked, in Hindi, what the achievement meant to him, he said, "Cricket is a great leveller." It surely is. He was in the mood for more philosophy. Dhoni added that the game had taught him that all this upar-neeche (ups and downs) was part and parcel of sport.

He even rubbished his diving-to-the-left, one-handed screamer off Soumya Sarkar as a "fluke". Earlier, he asked an Aussie journalist if he was planning to "put money on bet.com or something". Why? Because the poor chap asked him about Friday's Australia-Pakistan contest, the winner of which would meet India in the semifinal.

With an ODI captaincy record that even the Gods would be jealous of, Dhoni has little to prove to anybody. He has already won every ICC trophy — 2007 World T20, 2011 World Cup and 2013 Champions Trophy — that's there to be won. His win percentage in the knockout rounds of global events is second to none. He is an ODI legend with the bat alone.

The manner in which he has used his bowlers, hitherto incapable of evoking fear as a group, is laudable. No team has ever taken 70 wickets in seven straight World Cup games. "It has never really happened with the Indian cricket team, so it's definitely a big positive," Dhoni said. Why Indian cricket? It's not happened with any team. Not Lloyd's Unmatchables. Not Ponting's Unbeatables.

Dhoni praised the team work. "I think what's important for us is we have scored runs in all the games, whether we have batted first or chased, and still, we don't have our batsmen in the top five run scorers list for the World Cup, which means everybody has chipped in, everybody has contributed, which is a good position to be in, especially in the knockout stages. Maybe the individuals who get the number of wickets, they will change. The batsmen who scores runs, the names will change, but still, we are scoring runs and we are taking wickets. That will be good for us," he said.

He advised against over-analysing the game and stuck to his mantra of keeping things simple. "You start assessing everything because, as human beings, that's what we do better than some of the other animals. We are good thinkers. But over-thinking can actually kill you, especially in an environment like this where there's already so much pressure, especially if you are part of the Indian cricket team. It's not only about doing well on the field. When you go out, you have to have proper dinner, otherwise the camera gets you there also. It's a mix of everything, but keeping it simple helps," he said.

DID YOU KNOW?
MS Dhoni has 100 ODI victories under his belt. It's the third-most for any captain. The only captains with more ODI wins are both Australian, Ricky Ponting (167) and Allan Border (107).