Indian cricket fans across social media have somehow brought former India captain MS Dhoni in the limelight yet again. Comparisons with respect to captaincy and overall leadership ability between him and India’s T20I captain Hardik Pandya took centrestage just moments after the end of third T20I against West Indies in Guyana.
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As has been the case in most of the previous occasions, heaps of praises for Dhoni have yet again dominated the discussions at the cost of Pandya being at the receiving end. All it took was a winning six off the all-rounder’s bat for the fans to belittle his worth as a captain and a team man, term him as “selfish” and someone who would deny a wonderful opportunity to a youngster to reach an important milestone in the early days of his career.
The incidents being compared is the one around nine years ago wherein Dhoni had allowed his successor Virat Kohli to score the winning runs in ICC World Twenty20 2014 semi-final, to the one tonight when Pandya went for the glory shot with his partner Tilak Varma batting on 49*.
Hardik Pandya Hit A Six To Deny Tilak Varma A Half-century
India were well on course towards a certain victory with six runs required off the final three overs. Tilak Varma had taken a single on the fourth delivery of the 18th over to take his score to 49* (37). With victory a mere formality, fans had expected Pandya to take a single or play a couple of dot balls to bring Varma back on strike and help him score back-to-back T20I half-centuries.
However, Pandya decided to hit a six and finish off the proceedings, thereby leaving the 20-year-old one run shy of his well-deserved fifty. The ever-emotional fans just could not brush the so-called injustice and unfairness meted out to the southpaw under the carpet.
While one can understand the emotions of the fans, no way was Pandya or even Dhoni back then, obliged to have their partners back on strike just because they had done bulk of the scoring or played a match-winning hand in a run-chase. Any person following the game would anyway know the importance of Varma’s or Kohli’s knock regardless of them hitting the winning shot or reaching a personal milestone or not.
MS Dhoni Played A Dot Ball To Let Virat Kohli Hit Winning Shot During ICC World Twenty20 2014
En route a 173-run target in a knockout match in Mirpur, a Kohli masterclass (72* off 44) had guided India a place in the tournament final. However, with just one run for required victory, Dhoni somehow found himself on strike on the last delivery of the 19th over and with yet another opportunity to hit the winning runs for his side.
That said, as part of a lovely little gesture, the Indian captain deliberately blocked an innocuous short delivery towards the leg-side in order to allow Kohli to deservedly hit the winning runs. Kohli duly obliged by smashing a boundary off Dale Steyn on the first delivery of the last over itself to hand India a 6-wicket victory.
“There are not many who are as consistent as Virat [Kohli]. It is great to have him at No. 3. He grabs his opportunities. Something everyone needs to learn from him. The least I could offer Virat was the winning shot so I played out the last ball of the 19th over without a run,” remarked Dhoni during the post-match presentation ceremony back in the day.
India eventually lost the final match of the World Cup against Sri Lanka by 6 wickets.
