Former Indian captain and current wicket-keeper batsman MS Dhoni who has won all three ICC trophies is celebrating his 39th birthday today. The player from Ranchi, Jharkhand made his India debut against Bangladesh in December 2004. Dhoni’s career did not start much, but soon he made a mark in world cricket with his long hair and stormy batting.
MS Dhoni first led Team India in the T20 World Cup 2007. Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, and Ajit Agarkar were the only senior players present at that time.
The team, adorned with young stars, did not expect anyone to reach the semi-finals, but Dhoni did not lead Team India to knockout matches with his calm and shrewd captaincy, but also defeated the arch-rivals Pakistan in the final and made them world champions.
And only 5 days after winning the T20 World Cup, Dhoni got a chance to captain the 7 match ODI series against Australia. However, India lost the series 4–2. At the same time, in Test cricket, Dhoni first captained the Nagpur Test against Australia in 2008. Dhoni defeated Australia in the last Test and won the Border Gavaskar Trophy 2–0.
Under Dhoni’s captaincy, India defeated New Zealand in the 2009 Test series in New Zealand only. While in 2008 MS Dhoni also captured the CB series in Australia. Under his captaincy, Dhoni also elevated Team India to number 1 in the ICC Test rankings in 2009. But the 2010 T20 World Cup was nothing special for Dhoni and Team India. India won only two matches in this World Cup and was eliminated from the group stage.
But after the 2010 T20 World Cup failure, Team India made a strong comeback in the 2011 World Cup and defeated Sri Lanka by 6 wickets in the final. In this match, Dhoni played an unbeaten captaincy inning of 91 runs. With this Team India won the ICC world cup after 28 years. After this World Cup, Sachin Tendulkar praised Dhoni and called him the best captain under which he played.
In March 2013, Dhoni became the most successful Indian Test captain when he broke Sourav Ganguly’s record of winning 21 out of 49 Tests.
In June 2013, India won the 2013 ICC Champions Trophy by defeating England under Dhoni’s captaincy. With this Dhoni made history in world cricket. Dhoni became the first captain in world cricket to have won all ICC titles.
Dhoni is also known for his impeccable decisions. This may include Joginder Sharma getting the last over in the World Cup 2007, batting above Yuvraj Singh in the World Cup 2011, or making Rohit Sharma an opener from the middle-order batsman. Dhoni never doubted his decisions, which made his decisions successful.
Dhoni has captained India in 60 Tests, 200 ODIs, and 72 T20 matches, winning 27, 110, and 41 matches respectively. Apart from this, Dhoni was made the captain of ICC World Test XI in 2007, 2010 and 2013. At the same time, he was selected in the ICC ODI XI 8 times, in which he was the captain of the team 5 times.
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