The honeymoon period for India’s Young sporting campaign cannot even be said to be over and already Dhoni is beginning to show signs of the kind of stress skippers of Team India inevitably undergo from media scrutiny. Clearly under pressure to explain what went wrong in an ODI, Dhoni had said some weird things about how Sreesanth’s thinking was causing him problems while Munaf Patel’s not so brainy approach was more in the line of what a captain wants from his bowlers.
This was a bizarre line that could only have come from a captain not trying to find words to camouflage his thinking. He just came out and said what was in his mind. It is a tribute to his straightforward ways of thinking that the skipper should retain his natural style of speaking through all the pressure. His defence of Yuvraj Singh brought out his character best.
To hear the media chatter around a class batsman whose runs suddenly dry up must be particularly distressing for a captain who has absolutely no choice but to keep faith in the old dictum that while class is permanent, form is strictly temporary.
Ishant sharma and Praveen Kumar are the right choices that Dhoni have made to take into the game.
Pathan also clicked well and done his job according to the expectations.