Fingers begin to point at captain Dhoni

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The Perth Test beginning on Friday assumes a deadly kind of significance for India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni. If his team so much as lose it and go down 3-0, the cry that Dhoni be replaced as Test captain will pick up steam.

There is already talk in the air that Team India should try out the dual captaincy concept in which someone else will lead in Tests while Dhoni goes about the job in limited-overs cricket.
To suggest this would have been considered a sacrilege eight months ago when Dhoni held the 50-overs-a-side World Cup aloft, which even in the world dominated by T20 events is still considered the symbol of supremacy in limited-overs cricket. But eight months is a long time in international cricket and in that time India have fallen precipitously in the technically demanding Test match format.
The skipper’s Midas touch seems to have deserted him after the World Cup final. Anything must pale after such a high. His team’s record in Test cricket has been taking such a beating of late that Indian cricket itself seems to be suffering an existential crisis. And for his part Dhoni has not brought anything new to the Test arena in which he is no more being seen as Captain Cool.
Had Dhoni suffered a flash of genius and decided to field in the Sydney Test things may not have come to such a pass. In his last 12 Tests Dhoni had put the opposition in five times, with mixed results of course. He did so defensively in at least three Tests against South Africa and England last year, in order to try and avoid the rigours of batting in the face of early life, which is the Indian batsmen’s biggest bugbear.
Had he resorted to inserting the opposition once more, Dhoni’s men may have put up a much better show at the SCG where all the early life came from a doctored type of preparatory watering of the pitch. This is a tactic opposing teams have used to great effect in the recent past although India were once able to turn the tables on the hosts in the Durban Test in South Africa.
Twice in England Dhoni avoided batting first to give moist pitches the time to dry out and the tactic reaped strategic dividends at Trent Bridge when England were reduced to 88/6 and 124/8 despite which the hosts were able to come right back into the game because Indian batsmen proved incapable of consolidating on a strong position built up against a relentless pace attack. India were put in at Edgbaston and soon it was 3-0 in England.
It takes great courage to insert the opposition in Australia where the pitches flatten out much quicker and play very true. Dhoni is not to be faulted for not giving it a thought. He will still face a dilemma at the Waca where the promised bounce, specifically at the start, could be quite unnerving. The danger in Perth is the pitch tends to develop huge longitudinal cracks as the match progresses and batting last could be very tricky.
Apart from the decision at the toss, which finally can be only his and his alone, Dhoni has also not been found to be a pro-active skipper so far as driving the bowlers on is concerned. He is more the type to assume a quizzical air as the runs are piled on. Also, he has been known to fall back on defence far too early, for example, as he did not far into the resuscitating stand between Clarke and Ponting.
It’s not as if Team India have been without their chances at all in the six defeats in a row abroad. But then who else can take a lion’s share of the blame except the skipper for opportunities not utilised? The finger keeps pointing at the skipper the most in cricket much as praise is always heaped on him when the team is doing well. This is a fact of life and Dhoni should know it very well indeed.