Cricket-Criticism-Captain

I recently came across a picture on facebook. Of a couple and a donkey. Once they travelled on foot, alongside the donkey. Compassion, perhaps. Once, the man let the wife ride the donkey. Chivalry, maybe. Once, the man rode the donkey, the wife walked. Patriarchy, I guess. Once, the donkey had to carry both of them. Dominance of intellectual superiority, so we are proud to assume. But one thing was common. No matter what they did, the "public" always criticized them.
I go back a few years in history, in the times of Azharuddins, Jadejas, and of course Tendulkars(times is small word for this man, "era" is better fitting). All over, I used to hear, "Albeit Indian Cricket players are talented, they are not professionals, like Australians, or South Africans. The Captains, though intelligent, sometimes fail to act professionally." I come back to the present, I think of a person, M. S. Dhoni. And the first thing that comes to my mind is - A professional captain/player. The one, people in my memory were talking about. I assume that they should be happy with the fact. But hang on, at the taste of defeat, they are not. Following the tradition, perhaps of humanity, he went through what should I call, wrestler The Undertaker's "Last Ride". People, who happily carried him over their shoulders for World Cup Victories, for India's no. 1 Test ranking, are now rushing to bang him on the floor as hard as they can.
I absolutely understand, that every one who ascends to a throne has to step down at one point of time. But is it really the time for Dhoni, and is it really justified? That's the question I ask.
There's no dearth of criticism that Dhoni is facing at present. I will be providing a few statistics at some point of time in this post, but before that, I'll write about what I think about professionalism that he displays. "We have few slow fielders like Sachin, Gambhir, Sehwag in our side. So our batting has to compensate for those 20-25 extra runs that they may give away." Really, anything wrong with that? Is it not a fact? All of them, no doubt, are very safe hands as far as catches are concerned, but in the outfield, can they be compared to Kohlis, Rainas? And I don't think this sentence means that Sachin, Sehwag and Co. should be out of the side, it simply means that the batting has to click. And who's saying that they are less than capable of doing so?
Now, Dhoni as a batsman. Fortunately, so far, nobody doubts his batting abilities in One-days and T-20s. Tests, severely criticized. So, I will limit myself to the context of "Test Matches" in this post. No doubt, he is an un-orthodox batsman. But remember, he's a Wicketkeeper-batsman, not Rahul Dravid. And thus, I wanted to compare him with "Mark Boucher". I remember him always known as a dangerous, effective, quality player. And so, I felt, it's an apt comparison. So here are a few statistics.

	Matches	Innings	Runs	Average	HS	100	50	SR	Wickets
MSD	67	106	3509	37.33	148	5	24	59.96	192
MB	146	204	5498	30.54	125	5	35	50.17	530

So, if Mark Boucher, was very well fit into his role, are the above statistics not justifying Dhoni's place in the team as a Wicketkeeper-Batsman? In all terms? Only thing he lacks in, is perhaps wickets per match played. But, I don't remember him consistently making goof-ups behind stumps.
On his recent form, last 20 test innings, (maybe this England series not included), he has scored 611 runs. Almost the same as Boucher's career average, considering the worst case scenario of Dhoni getting out in all 20 innings. Last 10 innings, 299 runs, last 5 innings, 171 runs. And majority of the last few innings he played were away from home. This point, because of criticism that his away batting is "worst", or something of that sort. And he, most of the times, has to bat with the tail. A point worth noticing, isn't it?
Now, onto his captaincy. Another table of statistics, comparing Azhar, Ganguly, Dravid, Dhoni.

	Overall				Home				Away
	Played	Won	Lost	Draw	Played	Won	Lost	Draw	Played	Won	Lost	Draw
Azhar	47	14	14	19	20	13	4	3	27	1	10	16
Ganguly	49	21	13	15	21	10	3	8	28	11	10	7
Dravid	25	8	6	11	8	3	2	3	17	5	4	8
Dhoni	41	20	11	10	22	16	2	4	19	4	9	6

As we can see from the above table, in the overall win conversion factor, Dhoni beats all of them. At home conditions, hands down. The latest criticism is about his demand for pitches turning from day 1 -
My thinking : 1. Home advantage is used all over the world, in every sport.
                      2. He claimed, "If the pitch turns from day 1, it will play fair for both sides." England won, right?
Anyway, only major flaw in his record that I agree with is the away record. Though in the recent embarrassing 0-8 whitewash in two away series, the entire team failed to perform, on a broad basis; still, it is a major lacking in his record as a captain. And thus, I believe, in the couple of away series coming up in the near future, we need to back him as captain, give him and the team a chance to prove themselves. Even in those if he fails to perform as captain, maybe it would be justified to discuss about the change in captaincy. Going beyond statistics, I have genuinely appreciated some of the field placements, bowling changes, batting order changes he has made dynamically, and that characterises abilities of a captain, a tad bit more than statistics. He backs the players, and gives them a confidence boosting longer than critique-expected reign, and then when the players fail to perform (read Ravindra Jadeja, Rohit Sharma) he gets the blame. By the same people, who blame the selectors of not giving players sufficient opportunities.
Ricky Ponting, with a formidable australian unit, can only boast of a 50% win conversion rate in the away matches(19 wins out of 38 played), in a period when Australian team hogged the no. 1 spot for years. Dhoni deserves a chance to prove that he is capable of going near that record.
On a different note, Dhoni himself has said that he may have to quit one of the three formats by 2012-13, and I see him actually taking the decision. Time will tell. But I believe he's one of the rare professional cricket players that India has produced, a better-than-average Wicketkeeper, an un-orthodox and yet effective batsman, a good captain, perhaps the best of the choices available in the present.

P.S. I am not paid by Dhoni or anyone for this, neither am I a die-hard fan of Dhoni (Sachin, always). But having seen a lot of undeserved criticism towards him, I thought of doing a little research and writing about it.