Cricket Pulse

With Dhoni already at the helm of affairs in T20 and One-dayers, is it time for him to be handed the hallowed Test captaincy.

When Mahendra Singh Dhoni was first made the captain of the Indian One-Day International side, the reasons were obvious to everyone. All the seniors, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid, had already had their stints in the position and the juniors weren’t ready.

Among the contemporaries, Virender Sehwag was going through a horrid spell with the bat and Yuvraj Singh’s inconsistent manner meant that he wasn’t an easy guy to fall back on.

So in many ways, Dhoni became India’s default ODI captain. In much the same way, Anil Kumble also inherited the Test captaincy because of his immense experience and the fact that India were then going to tour Australia.

Against the toughest team in the world, a captain making his debut would always be under immense pressure. That’s why when Kumble got the job ahead of any of the younger players it made sense and the leg-spinner hasn’t done a bad job at all.