MS Dhoni and his fine art of rescuing the Indian team

‘He is the hero we need but not the one we deserve’ this line from the Dark Knight perfectly describes MS Dhoni and his stature in Indian cricket. He has time and again put his hand up when the chips were down, the wall was against the back and most times single-handedly bailed the team out of trouble. But do we give him enough credit for his contribution? No, we call for his exit from the team.

Not long ago, the cricketing pundits and experts felt Dhoni no longer adds enough value to the team for him to be a part of the playing XI. Today on a seaming wicket at the HPCA Stadium in Dharamsala when the younger players were clueless against the moving ball and a disciplined new ball attack from the Sri Lankans.

He absorbed the pressure and then rebuilt the innings despite the fact that he just had the tail-enders at his disposal and from 28/7 ensured the team at least had 112 runs on the board before they were skittled out.

Dhoni walked out to bat when the team was 4 down with just 16 runs in the account, he lost the last two recognized batsmen soon and then stitched invaluable partnerships with Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah and Yuzvendra Chahal to first ensure they didn’t earn any unfortunate low score record and then took the team over the psychological 100-run mark.

This is not the first time he rescued the team from a tough situation. In fact, it was the 7th occasion that he took the guard with the team score under 30. In all those games Dhoni has scored 514 runs that include two centuries and three fifties. He walked in at No.5, 6 and 7 on those instances and has maintained an unbelievable average of 85.67.

MS Dhoni’s scores batting at No.5, No.6 and No.7 with India’s total less than 30 in ODIs:

(Stats as on December 10, 2017)