Please don’t become a Captain Fool

India is lucky to have MSD: He is a reliable wicket-keeper and great stumper, a cool captain and a great finisher of the game, all rolled into one. But just lately, he has been overplaying his cool card. The thing about a good finisher is that he doesn’t let a climbing asking rate make him hit out at a good ball and get out; he knows the bowler is just as likely to feel the pressure and dish out a few bad balls eventually, and he waits patiently for those like an old turkey buzzard.

The tricky part is to be patient and yet take just enough of a calculated risk to make sure the prey doesn’t get away. With just 49 runs to get in the last 7 overs, an easy required rate of 7 an over with 8 wickets in hand, India had New Zealand boxed in a corner in that T20 game in Chennai the other day, and yet we contrived to lose by one run.

The set batsman Virat Kohli did get out in the 13th over, but there was no need for Dhoni, who came in at the fall of that wicket, to be so super-cool that he didn’t hit a single boundary till the 18th over, by which time the asking rate had crossed 10. Dhoni is good enough to score at over 10 an over in the last two or three overs, and he has done it too time and again, but does he have to try and do that every time? There was just no need for it in that NZ game, which is clear from the fact that we still had 6 wickets in hand at the end.

Even while setting a target, we have seen recently that Dhoni can be a little too conservative in that period between the 10th and 15th overs. His Chennai franchise let a few games slip that way in the last IPL. In Saturday’s practice game with Sri Lanka too, Dhoni scored just 14 from 28 balls before taking off. Sure, we lost four early wickets, but after settling into a good partnership with Rohit Sharma, there was no need to wait till the 17th over before accelerating. In the end, we lost only five wickets, that too with Rohit getting out in the final over. We scored 62 runs in the last four overs and defended our total of 146, but we won’t get out of jail every time. We could have made sure of winning this game by pushing the scoring rate from around the 13th over, considering we had Irfan, Ashwin and Harbhajan still waiting to bat.

MSD has a great opportunity in Sri Lanka to repeat the feat that catapulted him to fame and riches: winning the inaugural T20 World Cup in 2007. In between, we got walloped, but that’s because we played in England where we have struggled to put bat to ball in recent times. Sri Lanka will be different. In fact, it has been a happy hunting ground for MSD. He thrashed the home team 4-1 in an ODI series there just about a month back.

The pitches suit our batsmen because there’s not much grass on them, and they suit our dibbly dobbly super slow medium pacers like Irfan Pathan and Balaji too because they force the batsman to generate all the force.

Come on MSD, don’t mess it up by trying to be super cool and turning into a Captain Fool when you have everything going for you. Just keep things simple, and India could have a pair of World Cups next to each other on the mantelpiece.