Saturday, February 22, 2014
MAHENDRA SINGH DHONI (commonly known as M. S. Dhoni) (born 7 July 1981)
is an Indian cricketer and the currentcaptain of the Indian national cricket team. He is an
attacking right-handed middle-order batsman and wicket-keeper. He is widely regarded
as one of the greatest finishers in limited-overs cricket.He made his One Day International (ODI) debut in December 2004 againstBangladesh,
and played his first Test a year later against Sri Lanka.
Dhoni is
the captain of India in all three
forms of the game. His Test and
ODI records are the best among all Indian captains to date. He took over the
ODI captaincy from Rahul Dravid in 2007 and led the team to its first
ever bilateral ODI series wins in Sri Lanka and New Zealand. Under his
captaincy, India won the 2007 ICC
World Twenty20, the CB Series of 2007–08, the 2010 Asia Cup, the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup and the2013 ICC Champions Trophy. In
the final of the 2011 World Cup, Dhoni scored 91 not out off 79 balls to take
India to victory for which he was awarded the Man of the Match. After taking up
the Test captaincy in 2008, he led the team to series wins in New Zealand and West
Indies, and the Border-Gavaskar
Trophy in 2008, 2010 and 2013. In
2009, Dhoni also led the Indian team to number one position for the first time
in the ICC Test rankings. In
2013, under his captaincy, India became the first team in more than 40 years to whitewash Australia in a Test series. In June
2013, when India defeated England in the final of the Champions Trophy in
England, Dhoni became the first captain to win all the three ICC trophies. He
has also captained the Chennai
Super Kings to victory in the 2010 and 2011 seasons
of Indian Premier League along with the 2010 Champions League Twenty20.
Dhoni
holds the post of Vice-President of India
Cements Ltd. after resigning from Air India. India Cements is the owner
of the IPL team Chennai Super Kings, and Dhoni has been its captain since the
first edition of IPL.
Dhoni has
been the recipient of many awards including the ICC ODI Player of the Year award in 2008 and 2009 (the first
player to win the award twice), the Rajiv
Gandhi Khel Ratna award in 2007
and the Padma Shri, India's
fourth highest civilian honour, in 2009. He was named as the captain of ICC
World Test XI and ICC World ODI XI teams for 2009. The Indian Territorial Army conferred the honorary rank of Lieutenant Colonel to Dhoni on 1 November 2011. He is the
second Indian cricketer after Kapil
Dev to have received this honour.
In June 2013, Forbes ranked Dhoni at 16th in the list of highest paid athletes in the
world, estimating his earnings at $31.5 million.The TIME
magazine has added Dhoni in its
"Time 100" list of 100 most influential people of 2011. SportsPro has rated Dhoni as the sixteenth most
marketable athlete in the world.[
Dhoni was born in Ranchi, Bihar (now in Jharkhand),and he identifies as being a Rajput.His paternal village Lvali is in the
Lamgarha block of the Almora
District of Uttarakhand. Dhoni's parents, moved
from Uttarakhand to Ranchi where Pan Singh worked in
junior management positions in MECON.
Dhoni has a sister Jayanti Gupta and a brother Narendra Singh Dhoni. Dhoni is a fan of Adam Gilchrist, and his childhood
idols were cricket teammate Sachin
Tendulkar, Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan and singer Lata Mangeshkar.
Dhoni
studied at DAV Jawahar Vidya
Mandir, Shyamali, Ranchi, Jharkhand where he initially excelled in badminton
and football and was selected at district and club
level in these sports. Dhoni was a goalkeeper for his football team and was sent to
play cricket for a local cricket club by his football coach. Though he had not
played cricket, Dhoni impressed with his wicket-keeping skills and became the
regular wicketkeeper at the Commando cricket club (1995–1998). Based on his
performance at club cricket, he was picked for the 1997/98 season Vinoo Mankad
Trophy Under-16 Championship and he performed well.Dhoni focused on cricket after his
10th standard. Dhoni was a Train Ticket Examiner
(TTE) at Kharagpur railway
station from 2001 to 2003, under
South Eastern Railway in Midnapore (W), a district in West Bengal. His colleagues remember
him as a very honest, straightforward employee of the Indian Railways. But he
also had a mischievous side to his personality. Once, while staying at the
railway quarters, Dhoni and a couple of his friends covered themselves in white
bedsheets and walked around in the complex late in the night. The night guards
were fooled into believing that there were ghosts moving around in the complex.
The story made big news on the next day.
Dhoni married Sakshi Singh Rawat,
a native of Dehradun, Uttarakhand,
on 4 July 2010. At the time of their marriage, she was studying Hotel
Management and was working as a trainee at the Taj Bengal, Kolkata. After the
retirement of Sakshi’s father from tea gardens, their family shifted to their
native place, Dehradun.
The
wedding stumped the media and the fans as it took place only a day after the
couple got engaged. Bollywood actress Bipasha Basu, a close friend of Dhoni,
was quick to inform the media that the wedding was planned for months and was
not a spur of the moment decision.
Dhoni was named the captain of
Indian squad for the inaugural ICC
World Twenty20 held in South
Africa in September 2007. India were crowned champions as Dhoni
led the team to victory against Pakistan in a thrilling contest. He, then, went on to become the ODI
captain of the Indian team for the seven-match ODI series against Australia in September 2007. He made his debut as full-time Test
captain of India during the fourth and final Test against Australia at Nagpur
in November 2008 replacing Anil
Kumble who was injured in the
third test and who then announced his retirement. Dhoni was vice-captain in
this series up to that point. India eventually won that Test thus
clinching the series 2–0 and retained the Border-Gavaskar
Trophy. Dhoni had previously captained India
on a stand-in basis against South
Africa and Australia in 2008 and
2009 respectively.
It was
under his captaincy that India climbed to No. 1 in the ICC Test Rankings in
December 2009. After that he managed to lead India in a series-leveling world
championship of Tests against the South Africans in February 2010. India also
managed to draw the Test series 1-1 in South Africa later that year.
After
winning the 2011 ICC Cricket
World Cup final against Sri Lanka
on 2 April 2011 with his match winning knock of unbeaten 91, Tendulkar heaped
praises on Dhoni, claiming him to be the best captain he has played under.
Tendulkar mentioned that it was Dhoni's calm influence that was rubbing off on
all his team-mates and described Dhoni's handling of pressure was incredible.
Only nine
players have captained ten or more Tests playing as a wicket-keeper. Dhoni
leads the table with 33 Tests as captain, 15 ahead of Gerry Alexander in second place.
In March
2013, Dhoni became the most successful Indian Test captain when he eclipsed Sourav Ganguly’s record of 21
victories from 49 Tests. Ganguly
also said in an interview to a news channel that Dhoni is the all-time greatest
captain of India and he has a great record to support this credential.
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