Virender Sehwag : MS Dhoni should continue as captain till 2019 World Cup
Former Indian opener Virender Sehwag feels that MS Dhoni should remain at the helm of the ODI team till the next World Cup, amidst clamour for Virat Kohli to take over in all the three formats. Sehwag also believes that the captain should not be the only one held responsible for wins or losses.
“He should continue as captain till the next World Cup. If he does so, he can leave behind a good World Cup team,” Sehwag said while speaking to a TV news channel, reported Circle of cricket.
The 37-year-old feels that India do not have a finisher in their team who can replace Dhoni, if he retires now.
“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,” he added.
The former Indian international also refrained from blaming Dhoni for the ODI series defeat against Bangaldesh, or the T20 and ODI series losses against South Africa. He said, “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?”
On similar lines, Sehwag also went on to state that it is not right to give the complete credit for the 2011 World Cup win to Dhoni—the whole team should get as much of the credit.
“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.
Sehwag also said that Dhoni has been a better captain than Sourav Ganguly, however, he pointed out that a captain is always as good as his team. He 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?”