Captain Cool:Mahendra Singh Dhoni - Achievements as Captain

Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the poster boy of Indian Cricket has seen everything in his life. From being taken to his house in a police van after India's exit from 2007 World Cup to being adored by the whole country for leading the team to victory in the Inaugural World T20. From then on there was no looking back. He has transformed the Indian team into an World beating one and his understanding with coach Gary Kirsten is also one of the reasons for this success. But the most important aspect of the current Indian team is "they don't panic under tough situations and they enjoy each others success". When he was appointed captain for the world T20 many eye brows were raised and only later that all came to know Sachin Tendulkar himself had recommended Dhoni for the captaincy. Here are some the feathers in Dhoni's cap thus far.



Dhoni's Achievements:

• Team India went on to win the inaugural T20 cricket World Cup 2007
• First ever trilateral ODI series win in Australia versus Australia and Sri Lanka CB Series of 2007-08.
• First ever bilateral ODI series win in Sri Lanka (IDEA CUP) in August 2008.
• He captained Team India to win the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2008 at home versus Australia. India went on to win the coveted 4 match Test series (2-0).
• Also Team India to win the RBS Cup 2008 at home versus England. India went on to win the coveted 2 match Test series (1-0) and the 7 match ODI series (5-0) with the rest of the remaining two ODIs being abandoned.
• Under his captaincy, India beat Sri Lanka for the second time to clinch the IBDI Fortis Wealthsurance Cup ODI series 2009 (4-1) and the only Twenty20 International, the first Twenty20 International match held in Sri Lanka. This is the second straight series win for Team India in Sri Lanka.
• On the Indian tour of New Zealand in 2009 under his captaincy Indians created history by clinching their first ever ODI series in New Zealand, the National Bank Series 2009 . Before this, Indians had just won a Test series in New Zealand 41 years ago. Team India have comfortably won the 5 match ODI series (3-1) with an ODI being abandoned due to rain.
• M.S. Dhoni is the first Indian Captain to achieve nine consecutive ODI wins (between 14/11/2008 and 05/02/2009). Earlier the record of having eight consecutive ODI wins were owned by Sunil Gavaskar (5)- Kapil Dev (3), Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid.
• Previous captains Anil Kumble and Sourav Ganguly have said that under Dhoni India will reach greater heights and even all time great Richard Hadlee said that "Under Dhoni, India will become the world no.1 team" and he also said that by this 2-0 win that the Australian dominance in the cricket world had finally come to an end.
• As a farewell gift to former Indian captain, Sourav Ganguly who was set to retire after the Nagpur test against Australia, Dhoni asked Sourav Ganguly to lead the team for one last time towards the end of the Australian innings in the last test at Nagpur.
• Dhoni has already been compared to Australia's Steve Waugh for his captaincy skills. In the battle of nerves, the mental toughness accompanied with the cool temperament exhibited by Dhoni just resembles the times of Steve Waugh’s leadership.
• During the ODI Series 2009 in Sri Lanka, Dhoni had equalled the record of Zimbabwe's Andy Flower who has also played 46 ODIs in both roles of Wicket Keeper/Captain.
• Out of the 6 Test matches Dhoni has captained, the Indian Cricket Team has won 5 of them

This is just the begining. More to come from Mahi. The message from the Indian team to the rest of the cricket world is very clear - "Watch out we are coming at you"