Almost a decade ago, the Indian cricket faced the hit after the ugly Ganguly-Chappell episode, however, the ghosts of ‘dishonouring senior players’ came to haunt the Indian cricket again after a scathing letter from former Women’s ODI skipper Mithali Raj to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) about her alleged mistreatment went viral. Recently, another revelation has been made about one of the BCCI’s administrators displeasure with MS Dhoni captaining India in the ODI game against Afghanistan during the Asia Cup in September.
India went to play the tournament in the United Arab Emirates under the the leadership of Rohit Sharma as regular skipper Virat Kohli was rested after a grueling tour of England. After India qualified for the final by winning back-to-back games against Bangladesh and Pakistan in the Super Four stage of the tournament, both Sharma and his deputy in the competition Shikhar Dhawan chose to skip the irrelevant game against Afghanistan in Dubai.
WATCH – MS Dhoni Playing Tennis In Ranchi
The above-stated scenario paved the way for MS Dhoni to lead the side and it also became his 200th game as the captain of India in the ODIs and was only the third player after Australia’s Ricky Ponting and New Zealand’s Stephen Fleming to do so. According to a TOI report, a BCCI administrator was not okay with Dhoni being given the captain and wanted the next senior player in the squad to do the job. He had stepped down from captaining India in January 2017. MS has led India to 110 wins in 200 matches while five matches were tied.
As per the sources of TOI, the report said, “In the match against Afghanistan, Rohit Sharma rested himself and the Indian team management decided to hand over the captaincy to MS Dhoni because of his seniority and also as a special gesture. A senior BCCI administrator, however, kept insisting that appointing MS would’ve been a regressive step and said the next senior most cricketer should lead the side. So, all this talk about outsiders not interfering is absolute nonsense. The administrator refused to give MS the captaincy which was very weird given his experience.”
Dhoni though could not lead India to a win in his 200th match as the captain as the thrilling game ended in a tie. Rohit took back the captaincy reins for the final against Bangladesh and guided India to their seventh Asia Cup title.
