Dhoni: World Cup cannot get any bigger than this

India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni said the side's strength has been its spin bowling in the sub-continental conditions. Speaking to the media here on Friday, the Indian captain said it was important to pick sides according to the conditions and the situations.

On paceman Zaheer Khan's fitness, Dhoni revealed, “Zaheer looks fit as of now.” Queried about the inclusion of a second specialist spinner, he said, “That is definitely an option.”

Comparing the present side with the one, which went down to Bangladesh in the 2007 World Cup, Dhoni said, “As far as ability is concerned there is not much difference. But this side is in a better frame of mind.”

Asked about expectations and pressure that accompany a World Cup, Dhoni answered, “I think we can handle the pressure well. Pressure is an added responsibility to do well.”

“Everybody is looking forward to the tournament. There is tremendous excitement all around. It cannot get any bigger than this,” he said.

Dhoni added, “What I like about ODI cricket is that there is a bit of Test and Twenty20 cricket in it. If you lose wickets early then you need to play the waiting game and consolidate just like in a Test match. In the end overs, you need to go after the bowling like in the Twenty20 format. So, there is plenty on offer in one-day cricket.”

The India captain was pleased with his side's performance in the practice matches against Australia and New Zealand. “We have to keep improving even as we win. The team that plays consistent cricket in the league and carries that momentum to the knock-out stages has a very good chance. The key is consistency.”

Dhoni was appreciative about Bangladesh's fighting qualities. “They have been playing some good cricket. Their three left-arm spinners have been effective.”

He clarified that the Indian team never gave any excuses. “Sometimes a reasoning given is taken as an excuse,” Dhoni said. Dwelling on reverse swing and the role it could play in the World Cup, the Indian captain said, “Reverse swing will be important, particularly in the latter stages of an innings.” He also spoke about a team's balance and the need for the non-specialist bowlers to contribute.

Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan said, “I asked my men to approach the match against India like any other game.” He added, “I told them to enjoy the match and not feel the pressure. Actually, starting against a strong team like India is good for us. This is a very big competition; the people of Bangladesh are very happy to be a co-host and we need to give it our best shot.”

Sreesanth affords Dhoni more flexibility in management of overs

India will be without Praveen Kumar's control and two-way swing in the ICC World Cup. Santhakumaran Sreesanth is the replacement for the Uttar Pradesh paceman who has failed to recover in time from his elbow injury.

Will the absence of Praveen adversely impact India's campaign in the premier ODI competition?

Sreesanth is a capable bowler. This is particularly true in the Test match arena where his greater speed and threatening natural out-swing have posed searching questions to the batsmen. His wrist and seam position is exemplary and the lovely flow in his bowling is hard to ignore. When Sreesanth finds rhythm, he can sting.

But then, the delivery swinging away from the right-hander is a lesser threat in the one-dayers, particularly in the sub-continent. With the cordon hardly in place, edges can fly thick and fast between gully and third man.

This is precisely why Sreesanth has struggled to find the right balance in the shorter versions of the game. The paceman has 75 wickets in 51 ODIs at 32.04. However, his economy rate of 6.01 is more than what India expects from a specialist bowler.

A different role

If picked in the eleven, his role in the Indian team could be much different from that of the man he has replaced. Given his lack of speed, Praveen had to be used predominantly in the first 20 to 25 overs. The absence of speed made him vulnerable in the latter stages of the innings. With Sreesanth around, Mahendra Singh Dhoni will have greater flexibility in the management of overs.

The 28-year-old Sreesanth, arguably, is more versatile. Apart from being a natural new ball bowler, he is better suited to operating in the end overs given his ability to reverse the ball. While the mandatory change of the ball after the 34th over has reduced the influence of reverse swing, it could still be a factor in the critical final five or six overs.

In the India-New Zealand ODI series this season, Sreesanth's four for 47 at Jaipur reflected his ability to bend the ball at the death; his yorkers were on target. In the earlier game too, at Guwahati, Sreesanth (three for 30) picked up two of his wickets at the conclusive stages of the innings.

Sreesanth can strike with the new ball, hunt for wickets in the often game-changing middle overs and provide thrust to the attack in the last stretch.

In the series against the Kiwis, Sreesanth bowled closer to the off-stump. While he denied the batsmen width, his out-swing and the in-swinging yorker assumed greater threat.

Actually, when someone such as Sreesanth operates to a fuller length, there is very less margin for error. The paceman has been working on his control; he comprehends precision will be the key.

Dhoni captaincy will make a difference: Waugh

"Beware of the Aussies." That's what former Australia skipper Steve Waugh had to say when asked about his team's chances in the World Cup. Though this is the first time the focus is not on the No. 1 cricket team in the world, Waugh believes that's going to change the moment they land in India.

"Australia are a great side, and don't forget they are the No. 1 team in one-day cricket," said the former captain who won the World Cup twice - as a player in 1987 and as captain in 1999.

"They will be coming to India after a great one-day series against England," he said on the sidelines of the Laureus World Sports Awards function. "Once they start winning, the focus will be back on them."

Though he felt Ricky Ponting's Test captaincy needed to be reviewed after the Ashes loss, he was happy with the way 'Punter' had been leading the side in one-dayers. "He is after all a World Cup winning-team captain. It's rare. So, we can't be critical of his one-day captaincy. But in Tests, after losing the Ashes, his role may be reviewed and a decision should be taken soon."

Speaking of captaincy, Waugh likes the way India skipper MS Dhoni leads his team. And that might be a crucial factor during the World Cup. "Dhoni is cool and composed and shows little signs of anxiety under pressure," he said. "This will definitely help when you are playing in front of 90,000 people supporting and egging you on."

Waugh also praised Sri Lanka skipper Kumara Sangakkara and West Indies' captain Darren Sammy's leadership qualities.

On the lack of spinners in the Aussie team, Waugh said, "That should not affect their success. They have good spinners in (Nathan) Hauritz and leg-spinner Steve Smith. Even Hussey can spin the ball."

Commenting on the ban imposed on young Pakistan pacer Mohammad Aamer, Waugh said he felt sorry for the youngster. "(I) Feel sorry for him as he is too young. (But) good to see the ICC taking such decisions. I am sure he will learn to not interact with certain kind of people. Hope he will take this punishment positively.

The Mahendra Singh Dhoni Story !!

There was a time when the very idea of an Indian cricketer rivalling Sachin Tendulkar in the popularity stakes bordered on the preposterous. But the advent of Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his meteoric rise through the ranks did just that, with a new generation transfixed by a small-town boy whose personality and background couldn't have been more different from that of Tendulkar.

Few had heard of him as a 23-year-old when he savaged a Pakistan A side in Nairobi. There had been the odd excited whispers from those who watched his big-hitting exploits in Kolkata club cricket, but hardly anyone expected that he would be playing for India within months of that Kenyan safari. In his fifth game, he lashed a matchwinning 148 against Pakistan and later in the year, he clubbed 183 against Sri Lanka. Such was the impact of his strokeplay that a far-from-polished wicketkeeping technique was almost ignored as he was fast-tracked into the Test side.

Within two years of that, he was leading an inexperienced team to glory in the inaugural World Twenty20, and winning the last tri-series to be held in Australia. When Anil Kumble handed over the Test reins in 2008, he celebrated with a home victory against Australia. Apart from the World Twenty20 win, his leadership also oversaw India's rise to the pinnacle of the Test ladder, and a massively successful three years for the Chennai Super Kings franchise that did well in each of the first three seasons of the IPL before winning the event in 2010, and going a step further to claim the Champions League in the same year.

Off the field, his Samson mane and fondness for fast bikes marked him down as Mr Cool, and though the haircut eventually became short-back-and-sides, the cool quotient never wavered. He was seldom flustered on the field either, batting and leading the side with poise and assuredness. Not for him the sustained harangue or the bloody oath.

He fine-tuned his game too, becoming a safe keeper and a batsman capable of shifting through the gears as he pleased. Sometimes discomfited by the short ball, he compensated with astonishing power in his preferred hitting zones. The scythe over midwicket, even to yorker-length deliveries, drove bowlers to distraction, and his mastery of the 50-over game is revealed by a batting average that remains over 50 after more than 150 games.

He remains the advertiser's dream and a poster boy for modern-day India, but off the field, Dhoni has seldom courted attention or publicity. Even his wedding was a low-key family affair, and now nearing 30, he remains content to make the big statements where they need to be made, out on the field.

Dhoni is someone who leads from front, feels Binny

KOCHI: Former India all-rounder Roger Binny, one of the architects of India's World Cup victory in 1983, feels that " Mahendra Singh Dhoni is someone who leads from the front."

The former medium pacer feels that India have a good bunch of all-rounders which will be key to team's success in the upcoming World Cup.

"The likes of Yusuf Pathan, Dhoni and Suresh Raina are all capable of filling the 7-8 slots and having them in the side, Team India can do wonders," Binny, who is here as part of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 said.

"Since India last won the World Cup 28 years back, expectations had been high and fans all over want the country to win every World Cup," he said.

"India need to win this World Cup and the certainly there is a lot of pressure on the players," Binny, the highest wicket taker of the 1983 edition said.

Taking a trip down memory lane on India's dream run and victory under the captaincy of Kapil Dev, Binny said "We had some good specialist batsmen. But during our dream run, it was the lower-order batsmen, who clicked."

why He Is A Captain Cool ????

Just think. When was the last time you saw MS Dhoni keep wickets without sporting his now-trademark shades? Often these are of an orangish hue; often a shade darker, like in the recent fourth ODI at Port Elizabeth. Behind them, his mind ticks away frenetically. All the while, Dhoni will be pulling off some lightening fast stumpings, shifting the field around, reading the pitch and rotating his bowlers or dishing out the occasional mild rebuke.

Sometimes, he must be contemplating the meaning of fear and the price of failure too. On the outside, though, you won't see him chew his nails. You won't see him lose his marbles over a missed catch. His mind must be a maelstrom of ideas, options and possibilities; the exterior gives nothing away. The shades are, unwittingly or not, Dhoni's defence in a world in which he must hide every flaw, every physical expression of doubt. Hitting a ball out of the park would seem a tad easier in comparison.

This commendable restraint has made the phenomenon called Dhoni perplexing to comprehend. The same people who dubbed him 'Captain Cool' will call him 'lucky'. Many cricket-buffs swear that like the Beatles, this is one talent in the right place at the right time. That's a simplistic assertion and must make Dhoni squirm. As John Burroughs once said, "Temperament lies behind mood, and behind it lies the fate of a character." Temperament is Dhoni's Excalibur. This is what sets him apart.

Only he knows if he can always be 'Captain Cool', and there are instances when he hasn't lived up to the moniker. But Dhoni has always carried himself like he belongs. At the Wanderers when Sreesanth took that catch to make the World T20 trophy India's, Dhoni, then a greenhorn captain whose situational leadership had already started coming in for praise, merely smiled and uprooted the stumps, even as his team and a stadium erupted around him. He didn't make a beeline for the cup and elbow others out of the way to pose when the time came. He wasn't vastly older or more experienced at what he did than the others around him. He was, simply, to the manner born. His poise, which even put some in the press box to shame, was uncanny. Not for Dhoni the histrionics of a maudlin award winner. He can take to a stage like he owns it.

Dhoni isn't one for reading and statistics but his astute eye sized up the body language of champions much before his skills caught up with them. Made captain out of the blue, he remarked: "I want a team that can stand before a truck." Occasionally, he has offered a peep into the philosophy of a small-town boy who made a seamless transition into one of India's most-recognised faces: "There are some who buckle under pressure and some who don't. As a human being, the pressure is always there inside you, but you don't show it on your face. It is about facing the challenge."

At Faisalabad, he scored his first Test ton and identified this core competency: taking the bull by the horns. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the rebuff at Railways, where he felt ignored during trials and then played coy when they woke up to his potential. Not as insanely talented as some of his contemporaries, his batting and wicketkeeping both betray a lack of conventional cricket schooling. But Dhoni boasts a sophisticated ability to adapt. You rarely see him getting carried away in a big-hitting frenzy. His man-management skills too are blunt but efficient, like leaving Ganguly and Dravid out of the CB Series.

CSK teammate Mathew Hayden recalls in Standing My Ground how Dhoni came up to him at a training session in Durban and said, "I feel I can talk to you now...that means I'm comfortable with you." Hayden writes that he realized he had been comfortable with Dhoni for a long, long time.
Team India, too, is comfortable. India's hardest working cricketer is also a hands-on leader whose assurance is contagious.

What makes Dhoni really special:

leading from the front
There's nothing that ruffles the Indian captain. Neither Ricky Ponting's foul mouth nor Kevin Pietersen's switch hits. The match may have turned into a Ram Gopal Verma 'thriller', but Dhoni always looks more relaxed than a cat purring on a couch. This quality has rubbed off onto his teammates as well. India no longer crumble in tight situations. One key ingredient of his success - his cool as a cucumber head.

Good finisher
Dhoni has grown from being just a power-hitter to a much smarter batsman, the one man you would like on the crease in a run-a-ball situation. He can accelerate the scoring at will or just milk the bowling for singles around the ground. His presence in the slog may mean an addition of 30 more runs. He is the crunch-situation man.

Confident
Imran Khan wouldn't have been the phenomenon he was if not for the belief he had in himself and his team. All great captains, in fact, are great self-believers. Dhoni is no different. He not only backs his own abilities but shows a lot of faith in the men who turn out on the field for him. That's a mark of an extremely self-assured leader. Reputations don't bother him, nor is he intimidated by history.

Unique style
Like Sehwag, it is difficult to copy Mahi's style. Like the 'helicopter shot' The bat comes down on the ball at a full-pitched delivery in rocket speed, and send the ball soaring down the ground with a horizontal swing. The other stroke from his armoury is the stroke played straight down the ground by using the forehand.

Yea he is preparing for the worldcup The bigbash, The crown that any cricket captain in the world would dream, can he do it? "yes he can" he said "pressure is gonna be our responsibility, we all know he is good captain which India has ever produced some may compare him witha a Sourav Ganguly But I must say that's a big foolishness, Dhoni has proved to be the best Indian captain knowing his weakness and also creating a good team even without a Sachin Tendulkar And Rahul Dravid And Climbing The moutain of world No.1 Test spot, Who can be so better? Yea.. The time has come, He has proved hin T20 and Tests, Now iTs the ODI game, Looking And The current team Withe the leader MSD who is gonna play a vital part in the team, This team has Very good chance of winning the Title Players LIke Sachin And Sehwag who is fullfilled with talent and experience and The young guns Like Virat kohli And Suresh Raina, bowling is good in Indian coditions , we are capable of bowling our 50overs with a Batting allrounder ie, IN India it gonna be a spinning pitch and we have a lot of partimers,The main Topic Now goin through the whole world Is Sachin The one and Only

Sachin Tendulkar will play 3-4 more World Cups: Dhoni

File photo

Several cricket pundits believe that Indian batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar is appearing in his last ICC cricket World Cup this year.

Though, Indian cricket Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni differs the experts opinion as far as Tendulkar’s World Cup appearance is concerned.

Sachin Tendulkar, who is set to equal the record of Javed Miandad’s Most World Cup appearance, will play 3-4 more quadrilateral extravaganza in his career, feels Dhoni.

Indian skipper, who is visiting his home town Ranchi before the World Cup, said that Tendulkar will play 3-4 more World Cups in his career.

A confident Dhoni, however, said that fielding is major area of concern for the team. “There is certain need to improve the fielding during the World Cup.”

However, millions of die heard fans of iconic batsman want him to play cricket forever. In India, it is like a crime if you think the master blaster will have to hang his boots one day. Despite of this, truth is bitter and everyone has to accept it with heavy hearts that Tendulkar will retire one day after ruling the World Cricket for many years.

At the same time, no one can deny that Tendulkar is enjoying his golden form. In the last calendar year, he silenced all the critics with his bat. He surprised everyone when he scored double hundred in ODI and fifty centuries in Test cricket.

Tendulkar’s present form also justifies Dhoni’s claim. He has still hunger for runs after spending two decades in the game.

Let hope, Sachin Tendulkar’s unfulfilled dream (World Cup title) may come true in the Cricket World Cup 2011, to be held in sub-continent from February.

India is favourite for the coveted trophy but they will have two overcome the pressure of playing under home crowd.



to be continued..............