Poster boy Dhoni in the midst of criticism

CRICKET IS a game, which demands on ample amount of luck factor apart from a lot of hard work. Imagine what would have happened if Misbah ul Haq’s shot of the last ball would have landed outside the boundary for a six in the finals of the last Twenty20 World Cup. In a country like India, riots would have happened all around and who knows if the crowd would have reacted with Dhoni in the same manner they did with Mohammad Kaif in the Natwest series against England. But as mentioned in the beginning, luck plays a very important role and no doubt Mahendra Singh Dhoni has been carrying abundance of luck. Nothing disastrous happened and India became the champions of T20 World Cup and along with the trophy lady luck brought a lot of wealth for Dhoni.

But life takes you through a full circle. The ‘poster boy’, ‘man with a midas touch’, Dhoni is now going through that same phase. The man who has given Indian cricket some of the finest memories to cherish forever is being questioned and criticised for his decisions after India was knocked out of the ongoing T20 World Cup. No doubt the man carries ample amount of luck with him but as a part of the ‘complete cycle’ the question is, is this the end of Dhoni’s bright fortune as the ‘captain with the midas touch’?

It all began with Sehwag-Dhoni issue. The captain himself looked suspicious of what had actually happened with Sehwag and later on he accepted that there were some issues. In a do or die match promoting an inexperienced Jadeja before Yuvraj and himself was a decision that led Indian team exit off the competition. Jadeja scored 25 off 35 balls, these 10 balls could have made huge difference to the result. But the result was something different. The hosts defeated the defending champions by three runs. Shuffling with the batting order, not using Yusuf Pathan’s effective medium pace are some other questions for which Dhoni will have to search for logical answers.

Dhoni nowadays appears in almost every alternate advertisement. It might not be a pleasant sight for the Indian fans. Only time will tell if the current failure of Indian team will affect Dhoni’s endorsements in particular. The burning question is whether “I am sorry” is enough to cool down the billion of broken hearts?