Mahendra Singh Dhoni
Mahendra Singh Dhoni known as
M. S. Dhoni is an Indian
cricketer and the
current
captain of the
Indian national cricket team. He is an
attacking right-handed middle-order batsman and
wicket-keeper.
He is widely regarded as one of the greatest finishers in limited-overs
cricket. He made his
One Day International (ODI) debut in December
2004 against
Bangladesh, and played his first
Test
a year later against
Sri Lanka.
Dhoni is the captain of India in all
three
forms of the game. His Test and ODI records are the best among all Indian
captains to date. He took over the ODI captaincy from
Rahul
Dravid in 2007 and led the team to its first ever bilateral ODI series wins
in Sri Lanka and New Zealand. Under his captaincy, India won the
2007 ICC World Twenty20, the CB Series of
2007–08, the 2010 Asia Cup, the
2011 ICC Cricket World Cup and the
2013 ICC Champions Trophy. In the final
of the 2011 World Cup, Dhoni scored 91 not out off 79 balls to take India to
victory for which he was awarded the Man of the Match. After taking up the Test
captaincy in 2008, he led the team to series wins in New Zealand and West
Indies, and the
Border-Gavaskar Trophy in 2008, 2010 and
2013. In 2009, Dhoni also led the Indian team to number one position for the
first time in the
ICC Test rankings. In 2013, under his
captaincy, India became the first team in more than 40 years to
whitewash Australia in a Test series. In June
2013, when India defeated England in the final of the Champions Trophy in
England, Dhoni became the first captain to win all the three ICC trophies. He
has also captained the
Chennai Super Kings to victory in the
2010 and
2011 seasons of
Indian Premier League along with the
2010 Champions League Twenty20.Dhoni
holds the post of Vice-President of
India
Cements Ltd. after resigning from
Air India.
India Cements is the owner of the IPL team Chennai Super Kings, and Dhoni has
been its captain since the first edition of IPL. Dhoni has been the recipient
of many awards, including the
ICC ODI Player of the Year award in 2008
and 2009 (the first player to win the award twice), the
Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award in 2007 and
the
Padma
Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honour, in 2009. He was named as the
captain of ICC World Test XI and ICC World ODI XI teams for 2009. The Indian
Territorial Army conferred the honorary
rank of
Lieutenant Colonel to Dhoni on 1 November 2011.
He is the second Indian cricketer after
Kapil Dev
to have received this honour. In June 2014, Forbes ranked Dhoni at 22nd in the
list of highest paid
athletes in the world, estimating his earnings at
US$30 million. The
TIME
magazine added Dhoni in its "Time 100" list of 100 most
influential people of 2011. In 2012,
SportsPro
rated Dhoni as the sixteenth most marketable athlete in the world.
History
Dhoni was born in
Ranchi, Bihar (now in
Jharkhand),
and he identifies as being a
Rajput. His paternal village Lvali is in the Lamgarha block of
the
Almora District of
Uttarakhand.
Dhoni's parents, moved from
Uttarakhand to Ranchi where Pan Singh worked in junior
management positions in
MECON. Dhoni has a sister Jayanti Gupta and a brother
Narendra Singh Dhoni. Dhoni is a fan of
Adam
Gilchrist, and his childhood idols were cricket teammate
Sachin
Tendulkar,
Bollywood actor
Amitabh
Bachchan and singer
Lata Mangeshkar Dhoni studied at
DAV Jawahar Vidya Mandir, Shyamali,
Ranchi, Jharkhand where he initially excelled in badminton and
football and was selected at district and club
level in these sports. Dhoni was a
goalkeeper for his football team
and was sent to play cricket for a local cricket club by his football coach.
Though he had not played cricket, Dhoni impressed with his wicket-keeping
skills and became the regular wicketkeeper at the Commando cricket club
(1995–1998). Based on his performance at club cricket, he was picked for the
1997/98 season Vinoo Mankad Trophy Under-16 Championship and he performed well.
Dhoni focused on cricket after his 10th
standard. Dhoni was a Train Ticket Examiner
(TTE) at
Kharagpur railway station from 2001 to
2003, under South Eastern Railway in Midnapore (W), a district in
West Bengal.
His colleagues remember him as a very honest, straightforward employee of the
Indian Railways. But he also had a mischievous side to his personality. Once,
while staying at the railway quarters, Dhoni and a couple of his friends
covered themselves in white bedsheets and walked around in the complex late in
the night. The night guards were fooled into believing that there were ghosts
moving around in the complex. The story made big news on the next day.
Dhoni married Sakshi Singh Rawat, a native of
Dehradun,
Uttarakhand, on 4 July 2010. At the time of their marriage, she was studying
Hotel Management and was working as a trainee at the Taj Bengal, Kolkata. After
the retirement of Sakshi’s father from his tea growing business, their family
shifted to their native place,
Dehradun.The wedding stumped the media and the fans as it
took place only a day after the couple got engaged. Bollywood actress
Bipasha
Basu, a close friend of Dhoni, was quick to inform the media that the
wedding was planned for months and was not a spur of the moment decision.
Playing style
Dhoni is a right-handed
batsman and
wicket-keeper.
Dhoni is among the wicket-keepers who have come through the ranks of junior and
India A cricket teams to represent the national team.
Parthiv
Patel,
Ajay
Ratra and
Dinesh Karthik also followed this route.
Dhoni tends to play mostly from the back foot with a pronounced bottom hand
grip. He has a very high bat speed through the ball which often results in the
ball racing across the ground. From this initial stance his feet do not show
much movement which sometimes results in chasing balls while not coming to the
pitch of the ball or some deliveries catching the inside edge.
Early career
In 1998 Dhoni was selected by Deval Sahay to play for the Central Coal
Fields Limited (CCL) team. Dhoni was included in the Bihar U-19 squad for the
1998-99 season and scored 176 runs in 5 matches (7 innings) as the team
finished fourth in the group of six and did not make it to the quarter-finals.
Dhoni was not picked for the East Zone U-19 squad (CK Nayudu Trophy) or Rest of
India squad (MA Chidambaram Trophy and Vinoo Mankad Trophy).
Bihar U-19 cricket team advanced to the finals
of the 1999–2000 Cooch Behar Trophy where Dhoni made 84 to help Bihar post a
total of 357. Bihar's efforts were dwarfed by
Punjab U-19s' 839 with Dhoni's future
national squad teammate
Yuvraj Singh making 358. Dhoni's contribution in the
tournament included 488 runs (9 matches, 12 innings), 5 fifties, 17 catches and
7 stumpings. Dhoni made it to the East Zone U-19 squad for the CK Nayudu trophy
but scored only 97 runs in four matches as East Zone lost all four matches and
finished last in the tournament.
