Dhoni should lead till 2019 50-over World Cup, says Sehwag

“And if he retires… you can imagine, even now when Dhoni is there, people have to think about who should bat at 5th, 6th and 7th positions. If Dhoni is not there, the 5th, 6th and 7th slots will become absolutely free and you cannot expect somebody to finish the match properly.”

Dhoni will have turned 38 years of age by the time the next 50-over World Cup comes around.

Batting great Sehwag said it is wrong to blame the skipper alone for a team’s defeats, referring to India’s ODI series loss in Bangladesh and the recent Twenty20 and ODI series defeats at home to South Africa.

“We lost because of the team, and not because of the captain, because neither our batting nor bowling was up to the mark. For how long will Dhoni alone win the match for us?” Sehwag said.

Success or defeat, the ownership lies with the team, Sehwag said, as the topic veered to an incident post India’s 2011 World Cup success when Sehwag had declared that the triumph was a team effort and not solely because of Dhoni’s captaincy.

“Ask anybody sitting here in the audience whether my statement was correct or not. My statement was not wrong, my statement was incorrectly portrayed or projected. I was not making a jibe at Dhoni. What I said was: do not give the entire credit to the captain, give credit to the team too,” Sehwag said.

“No doubt, if you go through records, Dhoni is India’s best captain to date. Beating Sourav Ganguly, he won the Tests (No. 1 ranking), ODIs and T20s, won both the World Cups. Nobody can deny that, but to give credit to a single person is not good, others should also get credit for winning the Cups.

“I made 175 runs in the first match, and Dhoni made 92 runs in the last match. In between, I performed well in one or two matches, and Dhoni couldn’t perform well in any. Gautam Gambhir made runs and Yuvraj Singh won Man of the Series. And if tomorrow somebody says, we won the World Cup because of Yuvraj, will anybody agree?”