Mahendra Singh Dhoni
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.
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