The Phenomena of MS Dhoni- Success VS Leadership!!

I remember an incident very vividly at the start of my professional career. There was a reputed company whom my organization wanted to have as a strategic customer. I had managed to establish contact with a key decision making executive in the prospect organization, & had set up his meeting with my manager. For this achievement of mine my manager applauded my efforts in the midst of the entire office, and even sent an email highlighting my role to the CEO&COO. All these praises embarrassed me a little, as I had just managed to set up a meeting; while the abundant praises would suggest that I had played an instrumental role in cracking a multi million dollar deal. However, all the plaudits made me extremely confident in my abilities & galvanized me to strive for excellence just for the sake of my manager.

Appreciation of your teammates is an extremely important aspect of leadership, and just about everybody acknowledges it. A bit of praise, even if a bit exaggerated, can work wonders to the morale of an individual, especially if he is just a youngster starting off his career. Sadly, one of the greatest leaders in India as proclaimed by the pundits & his legion of fans isn’t very lavish in dishing out appreciation, especially to some.

After India scrapped to victory in the last ODI against Pakistan to avoid the ignominy of a 3-0 series whitewash; Mahendra Singh Dhoni was asked to comment about the performance of our fast bowlers, especially the young debutant Shami Ahmed who had bowled impressively (9-4-23-1) in the match. MS to everybody’s surprise didn’t have a word of praise for the 22 year old Bengal pacer, instead attributing his success to the favorable conditions for seamers. Worse he praised his favorites & fellow Chennai Super Kings’ teammates Ashwin & Ravindra Jadeja for their outstanding bowling, when Ashwin had leaked almost 50 runs in his allocated quota of overs in a chase of 157!! To add to his misery Shami was dropped from the next game. Hardly confidence building, & heavily demoralizing stuff for a youngster.

Contrary to the beliefs of a lot of pundits, I DO NOT believe that MS Dhoni is a great leader of men. Highly successful undoubtedly- but not a great leader. His leadership is based on the two ‘I’s- Instinct & Individual brilliance. MS’s highly enviable track record as captain largely hinges on the former. For the 1^st 3-4 years of his captaincy he took decisions on & off the field based on hunches & intuition which weren’t backed by logical reasoning. Uncannily though, most of his hunches worked and he became the man with the Golden arm, leg or mind…whatever you want to call him. The 2^nd ‘I’ is something that is really commendable. Time and again he has played the rearguard role with perfection while batting, especially in the limited overs format. His knock in the 2011 World Cup Final while executing a similar role has become the stuff of legends.

However, now that is famous ‘luck’ has deserted him, his intuitive decision making not backed by logical rational is looking misplaced & rather stupid. Just take the example of the last ODI which India lost to England. The turning point of the match was the 38 runs India conceded off the last couple of overs bowled by Ishant Sharma & Bhubaneshwar Kumar. With due respect to all their exploits in the domestic level, it can safely be said that both Bhubaneshwar & Ashok Dinda are bowlers with limited abilities. While Bhubaneshwar can swing the new ball prodigiously, his military medium pace is easy fodder for good batsmen in the slog overs. Dinda is the reverse, miserly at the death with his ability to hit the block-hole consistently, but of no value with the new ball. Therefore, it’s the skipper’s responsibility to optimize the resources in hand & it’s here that MS’s knack of suspending logic for intuition hurts the team. He replaces Dinda with Kumar in the 48^th over, after the 44^th & 46^th overs bowled by him cost a mere 4 and 5 runs respectively with the wicket of KP to boot; and doesn’t bowl him again. Similarly, Kumar gets only 5 overs with the new ball when he seems the only bowler capable of troubling the batsman. Baffling?? Welcome to the Dhoni school of Leadership!!

What Dhoni sorely lacks as a leader are the 2 ‘V’s- Vision & Versatility. 2000-01 is often regarded as the renaissance year for Indian cricket, where under the stewardship of Sourav Ganguly & John Wright Indian cricket turned a new leaf, especially as far as overseas performances are concerned. The personnel of that era Dravid, Sachin, Kumble and VVS will tell you that the captain had communicated to the team in no uncertain terms that he wanted to change how Indian cricket was perceived outside the subcontinent- i.e. Tigers as home, and lambs abroad. Winning at home was important, but winning overseas is what will earn respect. The leader had a vision, which had the buy-in of his personnel, & which was extremely well executed resulting in test & series victories in England, Australia, SA, NZ, Pak & WI from 2001-10, not to forget being runners up in the 2003 World Cup played on the pacy tracks of South Africa. 

Dhoni unfortunately doesn’t have any such vision, for him perhaps winning the IPL is as prestigious as winning a test series in Australia. What else would justify his statement that losing a match to Bangladesh in the 2007 World Cup was a far bigger catastrophe than the 0-8 drubbing India has received in overseas tests in 2011-12. Fatally his personnel too have acquired a similar mindset. After another shameful defeat down under last year, Dhoni’s perceived successors Kohli & Gambhir had ranted that all teams are good in their own backyard, and India will give BOTH the Englishmen & Aussies a taste of their own medicine when they come calling to India. However, they had to insert their feet firmly into their mouths when the Poms gave us a hammering in the ‘home’ test series, and the Oz could well follow suit in Feb-March this year. However if that happens, the skipper shall be ready with his bagful of excuses ranging from the pitch, climate, curator injuries etc. It won’t be surprising if even the Al-Qaeda or the Global economic recession are made the next scapegoats for the defeats. :)

Versatility too is something not found in Dhoni’s leadership dictionary. Everybody remembers how an in-form VVS Laxman was pushed up to No.3 in place of an out of form Rahul Dravid in the 2^nd innings of the 2001 Kolkata Test against Australia. What happened thereafter is one of the finest moments in the annals of Indian cricket history. Similarly pushing middle order bats like Tendulkar, Sehwag & Ganguly to open the innings, using Dravid as wicketkeeper to ensure team balance were innovative steps taken by the then captains which showcased their flexibility & versatility in thinking, & helped India immensely in the long run.

Dhoni’s versatility is limited to whether to have Ravindra Jadeja, Rohit Sharma or Piyush Chawla fill the lone allrounder’s slot in the team; while the likes of Manoj Tiwary & Ajinkya Rahane become perennial bench warmers. He fails to think ‘out of the box’, beyond his tried, tested and failed tactics. His sole intention is to prove critics wrong by trying to succeed with the same methods rather than any insightful soul searching. Couldn’t a struggling Sehwag be pushed to the middle order, or Kohli asked to open the innings replacing the horrendously out of form Gambhir? I am not saying such moves will definitely work, but it shows that the captain is serious about a turnaround & has a Plan B & C in hand.

Another lacuna that hampers MS the leader is a lack of talent spotting ability. In his 5 year reign at the top, Ganguly backed & nurtured talents like Sehwag, Zaheer, Kaif, Yuvraj, Harbhajan & even Dhoni himself who became the fulcrum of India’s impressive performances for the next 8-10 years. Dhoni has completed his 5 years at the helm too; but can we say that either Jadeja, Ashwin, Raina or Chawla would be the flagbearers of Indian cricket for even half a decade? MS isn’t the one excited by raw talent; as we saw in England in 2011, he prefers to play a steady 130 kmph bowler like Vinay Kumar over raw 145 kmph bowlers like Varun Aaron or Umesh Yadav.

One of the most important parameters to gauge a great leader is the legacy he leaves behind. When Ganguly’s reign ended in 2005, the team literally built from scratch wore a settled look with a heady cocktail of seniors & youngsters groomed to propel the team in the years ahead. 

Though with N Srinivasan as BCCI Boss, its difficult to predict when MS’ reign will end, the near future is extremely dark & uncertain, with no clear road ahead.