I read one article in Wisden that states that Dhoni actually galvanised a young Indian team into world beaters. This article was written in 2007 immediately after India’s World T20 win against Pakistan and reproduced a couple of days ago after Dhoni announced his retirement. Was it really true that Dhoni transformed a young Indian team into world beaters? Is there any semblance of fact in such a statement? Let us try to analyse.
World Cup squad
It was a 15 member squad that travelled to South Africa. It contained a mixture of experienced and inexperienced players. Sehwag, Yuvaraj, Harbhajan, Gambhir & Agarkar were the experienced members whereas among the inexperienced players was Rohit, Irfan, Yusuf, Sreesanth, RP Singh, Uthappa, Dhoni, Dinesh, Piyush & Joginder. In terms of T20 experience, not only the Indian team but the entire world contained inexperienced players. Dhoni himself was not that experienced in terms of games or in terms of captaincy. It was his first experience as captain.
With a mixture of young and old, experienced and inexperienced, it was indeed a creditable achievement to win the inaugural World T20. Having said that, did Dhoni really transform a young team into world beaters? Well the said truth is that, he didn’t.
What happened to those cricketers after the win?
From that inexperienced lot among the players who won the World Cup, except for Rohit, Dhoni himself and to a certain extent Irfan Pathan, the rest didn’t get to play that many games for India. I do not remember Joginder Sharma being part of the Indian team for too long. In his career he played only a grand total of 4 ODIs and 4 T20s. Dinesh Karthik we all know was tried in various positions in all the formats. Sometimes as an opener. Few other instances in the middle order but he failed to deliver in any of the format. Piyush Chawla, Robin Uthappa, Yusuf Pathan and the rest hardly played consistently for more than 20 games either ODIs or T20s leave alone Tests.
Ganguly the real galvaniser
As for Sehwag, Yuvaraj, Gambhir, Harbhajan & Agarkar, they were already part of the team that Ganguly had built. With half of the World Cup winning team nowhere to be seen within a few years of winning, it is not correct to say that Dhoni developed a team of world beaters. That title must be bestowed on Ganguly and rightly so. It was Ganguly who galvanised a young India into world beaters. Ganguly brought in Sehwag, Yuvaraj, Gambhir & Harbhajan who performed admirably for quite a number of years.
Yuvaraj was instrumental in India winning 2 World Cups. Sehwag proved to be a destructive opener. Gambhir played lot of excellent innings. His runs in New Zealand in 2009 helped India win the test series not to forget his brilliant 97 in the 2011 World Cup finals. The purple patch when he became the top ranked batsman in ICC rankings will always be his crowning glory.
The 2001 series against Australia will forever be known as Harbhajan against Australia. Apart from these players, Ganguly brought the best out of Dravid & Laxman. He inspired Tendulkar to perform much better. He brought in Zaheer Khan who was for a longtime, India’s strike bowler. It was under Ganguly India started to win outside of the country. It is not correct to term that it was Dhoni galvanised a young team into world beaters. Last but not the least, Ganguly never had two consecutive 4-0 losses.