MS Dhoni, one of India’s most successful captains, having won all major ICC titles.
India won the ODI World Cup in 2011. In 2013, they won the Champions Trophy in England. And before all that, under his leadership, the Men in Blue won the inaugural T20 World Cup in 2007.
However, throughout his career, fans have called him Captain Cool for his ability to stay calm in nervy situations.
Now, the former India skipper revealed the reason behind his calm nature.
During an interactive session, Dhoni asked the audience, “How many of you think your bosses are calm?”. Some people raised their hands.
No mistakes
Seeing that Dhoni said: “Either they want to make brownie points or they are bosses themselves. Honestly, when we are on the field, we do not want to make any mistakes whether it’s misfielding, dropped catches, or any other mistake.”
He added: “I always try and get into their shoes to figure out why a player dropped a catch or why somebody misfielded. Getting angry does not help matters. There are already 40,000 people watching from the stands and crores of people watching the match (on TV, and streaming platforms). I had to see what the reason was (for fielding lapses).”
Hundered per cent effort
Dhoni said that every player always looks to give their 100 per cent in each match while playing for the country. “If a player is 100 per cent attentive on the ground and he misses a catch despite that, I don’t have a problem. Of course, I also want to see how many catches he took during practice before that. if he had a problem somewhere and if he is making efforts to get better or not. I used to focus on all these aspects instead of focusing on whether a catch was dropped. Maybe we lost a game because of that but the effort was always to try to step into their shoes.”
He continued: “I am also human. I would feel the same way inside as you all felt. When you go out and play a match among yourselves, you would feel bad. We represent our country, so we would feel worse. But we always try and control our emotions. Sitting on the outside, it’s always easy to say we should have played in a certain way but it’s not easy. We are representing our country but the opposition players are also representing their country. They are there to play the game and a lot of times, there will be ups and downs.”
(To receive our E-paper on whatsapp daily, please click here. To receive it on Telegram, please click here. We permit sharing of the paper's PDF on WhatsApp and other social media platforms.)
