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29 March 2024

Dhoni’s part-time loves, IPL strategy cost India World T20 title

Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni reacts after his team lose semi finals during the ICC Twenty20 Cricket World Cup's Super Eight match between India and South Africa at the R. Premadasa International Cricket Stadium in Colombo on October 2, 2012. (AFP)

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By Staff

There is a parallel to be drawn between football and T20 cricket, especially as cricketing playing nations attempt to set up premier leagues like their football counterparts.

Winning a league is different from winning any single tournament – in football terms knows as a ‘cup’.

Some teams are cup teams, some, league champions.

Different strategies are needed, different approaches.

India and Mahendra Singh Dhoni have made the mistake of approaching a cup tournament like it is the Indian Premier League.

Dhoni captains the Chennai Super Kings in the IPL that has won the IPL title twice in succession (2010 and 2011), reached the play-offs every season and is the first Indian team to have won the Champions League Twenty20.

In the IPL, each team plays, well, forever.

Sustaining a winning run in the IPL requires the over-thinking, over-tinkering, tiny adjustments that playing a match-a-day for 30 days requires.

From start to finish, the T20 World Cup winner in Sri Lanka will have played not more than 10 games.

Winning a World Cup needs you to turn up and play good cricket on the day.

India tampered with its batting and bowling lineup like this tournament was going to last forever.

Dhoni has to take responsibility for that.

His love affair with the 'part-time' aspect of cricket has cost India its place in the semifinals.

Part-time bowlers who can bat, part-time batsmen who can bowl. This drove the selection as against a team with players who bat well and bowl well, period.

The simple approach is what the likes of Australia and the West Indies in particular have taken.

The never-ending India debate that surrounded Virender Sehwag in the end left India’s batting lineup being held ransom to Dhoni’s idea of a winning combination – a discovery trip that ten games just do not afford you.

Amidst all the Sehwag smoke, Gautam Gambhir who should have been dropped continued to play.

A miscalculation during the Pakistan run-chase, a misjudgment of the rainy conditions against Australia and finally a mismanagement of resources.

Watch Dhoni in the IPL now, he will not make those mistakes against. 

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