What made MS Dhoni one of India's greatest captains? He just kept things simple

As a cricketing matter, there is exactly one implication of MS Dhoni’s decision to quit the Indian ODI and Twenty20 International captaincy at the start of this new year. It means that he is uncertain of playing international cricket for India in 2019, the next World Cup year.

If captaincy is something that really exists in cricket, and there are observers who think that it does exist, then it has a strange way of manifesting itself. If the point of the sport is to win, and the point of selecting teams is to win games, then is it not strange that nobody ever seems to get picked as a “captain”, any more than they get picked as a “slip catcher” or “a specialist third man”? Yet, captains clearly exist in cricket. Whether captaincy exists as a significant cricketing skill in the game is (or, more realistically, ought to be) a matter of substantial doubt.

What really is captaincy?

What does the captain do in cricket? Captains are not solely responsible for picking teams or squads. They do not have the power to make substitutions during a game. Captains basically do a couple of things on the field. They make bowling changes and they help bowlers set fields. Even here, in a good team, the bowling changes are self-evident most of the time and good bowlers know what fields they want and the lines of attack they want to pursue. In teams where a captain has to micromanage these things, things tend not to end well. Teams which pick players primarily to captain tend to end up losing.

In baseball, for example, captaincy is crucial. The real “captain”, as it were, is the manager, who is often referred to as “the skipper”. The skipper manages the pitching rotation, calls individual plays, signals fielding shifts, signals running strategy, decides which batters to pitch to, and which to walk intentionally. Literally every decision in an elite baseball game is made by the skipper from the dugout.

In cricket, captaincy is a legacy of the game’s conservative origins. It is perhaps MS Dhoni’s greatest contribution to the game that he mocked, in word and in deed, this cricketing caste system’s modern avatar. Like every player who has ever played in the international game, Dhoni knew that India’s results in Test cricket depended on the quality of the bowling they could field at any given time. His tenure as Test captain proved it.

The reason why Dhoni was spectacularly successful

In India, Dhoni was spectacularly successful, except when his side came up against a great English side with better bowlers than his own. Overseas, when Zaheer Khan was fit and in form, India were competitive. Otherwise, not. In limited overs cricket, it was a similar story, though given the structure of the contest, one batsman could influence proceedings decisively. And Dhoni is, without serious argument, one of the three of four greatest middle order batsmen in the history of limited overs cricket. It was this mastery with the bat which was one cornerstone of his captaincy.

Another was the quality of players he had surrounding him. The World Cup winning XI Dhoni led in 2011 included six players who had played at least 180 One-Day International matches. All eleven players had played at least 50. Many among those count as all-time great Indian players.

A common refrain among writers who have tried to write about Dhoni and journalists who have covered his press conferences is that he said a lot of things without actually revealing anything. Yet, they found him original. Perhaps this was because the phrases he used were not the phrases they were used to. Observers were nonplussed by Dhoni’s apparent resigned acceptance of India’s 4-0 defeats in England and Australia in 2011 and 2011-’12. Perhaps he understood what they did not – that for a combination of reasons, India just didn’t have the team to compete on those tours, especially with the ball.

In a long profile on Dhoni in The Cricket Monthly tellingly titled “The Star We Don’t Know”, Sidharth Monga paints a picture of a self-assured, free-thinking young man who advanced rapidly through the ranks of the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s development system. Greg Chappell identified Dhoni as a future leader. Dhoni’s rise (along with that of so many others) is testimony to the BCCI system’s ability to allow unorthodoxy to flower. It speaks to the wisdom and maturity in Indian cricket.

‘He doesn’t want to be bogged down’

Monga goes on to suggest that two events early in Dhoni’s career have shaped his attitude to the game. The first was the abuse and outright attacks he faced after India’s elimination from the 2007 World Cup in West Indies. He had to stay put in Delhi. The second was the almost ridiculous adulation which came his way (and India’s) after they won the World Twenty20 thanks to a fluke. In the article, Dravid observes “I think he doesn’t want to understand the full weight of being the India captain. He doesn’t want to delve into those things. He doesn’t want to be bogged down.”

This is perhaps the essential observation, not just about Dhoni’s career as captain, but of captaincy itself. While some of us may be satisfied by watching events on the field (the game itself in a strict sense) and not be particularly interested in the assorted paraphernalia which turns this game into a multi-million dollar industry, most of us are far more interested in the psycho-dramas which form the heart and soul of this industry. In this, there are leaders, rivalries, betrayals and cliques. There are courtiers, jesters, hagiographies and rumours from the press box to the committee room and in our current era, on social media.

Like all other things on the field, the captain’s duties are precise, limited and well understood by most if not all players who are good enough to be elite international cricketers. On the field there are few mysteries to captaincy, just as there are few mysteries to elite batting and bowling. All those involved are just too good at what they do for mysteries to survive.

A disarmingly simple game amidst all the muddle

Back in the old days, off the field, the captaincy was invented as a way to assert upper class amateur control over working class professionals. In our time, it has been reinvented as the perfect cipher – all things to all people, a core asset of the cricket-media-complex.

It is a way for white collar professionals (the core ingredient of the advertisers favorite demographic soup) to imagine their executive managerial selves on the field. It allows cricket writers to weave fantasies about clever moves (for example, Dhoni’s decision to have Joginder Sharma defend 13 runs in the final over of the 2007 World Twenty20) and more generally, an orgy of arguments which are post hoc ergo propter hoc. It allows fans to have someone to blame for misfortunes which befall their favorite player. The figure of a captain is a flag for people to rally around and a statue for pigeons to decorate.

On the field, a captain’s destiny is tied to a small number of precise, measurable things. Are there enough bowlers who can bowl a high enough percentage of deliveries on a precise line and length? Are there enough batsmen who have the defense, scoring shots and concentration to score enough runs?

Cricket is a disarmingly simple game sitting in the middle of an outrageously lucrative muddle. MS Dhoni understood this with rare clarity. This understanding was the hallmark of his captaincy. His cricket is a whole other story.