Mahendra Singh Dhoni: Traces of Arrogance?

After India failed to win the third test against New Zealand at Wellington Dhoni said strange things in defending himself or his decisions. He said that extra 70-80 runs give his bowlers more scope to attack. This is contrary to common logic. The less the target the more confidence you show on your bowlers. Setting a humanly impossible target of over 600 runs makes the proceedings a mere ritual. The time you lose in the process adds to the opposition's resolve to save the match.

No team in Test Cricket history ever successfully chased more than 418 runs in the last innings. India created history in 1976 at Port of Spain when they won the third test against West Indies successfully chasing a mammoth 403 runs in the fourth innings. In the New Zealand grounds the last innings biggest run chases were much lesser than that. At the Wellington pitch the winning run chases in the fourth innings were less than even 300.

Dhoni again said that he expected to get the New Zealand all out in 110-120 overs and so he did not bother much about the weather factor. How on earth could one expect the opposition to cave in as per his wish? You just cannot afford to be overconfident or complacent in a game of cricket.

And, these utterances from a captain who is replete with abundant positive vibes and undoubtedly the most successful one to lead Team India. Success in cricket leads to immense riches and thus hype is created and hype leads to a whole lot of negative characteristics including arrogance. And, this leads to a possible painful decline like we have seen in the case of Saurav Ganguly.

Arrogance is the last thing that cricket fans would want Dhoni to cultivate. His positive energy is doing wonders to a team that was used to play mostly safe games and try to save or lose matches rather than trying to win.

MS Dhoni is the best possible thing to happen to Indian cricket and he is something to be handled with utmost care. His positive body language and attacking cricket should go on undeterred to take India to the top.