Former Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni is regarded as one of the most successful skippers in the history of this game. In contrast to other captains like Ricky Ponting, Sourav Ganguly, Virat Kohli, and Rohit Sharma, MS Dhoni was famous for his coolness both on field and off the field.
It is not much hidden that unlike the recent Indian captains – Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, Dhoni had a calm stature and he knew how to bloom even in the pressure situation. But how did this calmness and coolness come to Dhoni?
While having a recent interview with Livfast, Dhoni revealed the secret of being cool even in crunch Moments. The former Indian captain said, “Honestly when we are on the field, we do not want to make any mistakes whether it’s misfielding, dropped catches, or any other mistake.”
Popularly known as Thala, he further stated, “I always try to get into their shoes to figure out why a player dropped a catch or why some player misfielded. Getting angry does not help matters. There are already 40,000 people watching from the stands and crores of people watching the match (on TV, and streaming platforms). I had to see what the reason was (for fielding lapses).”
He further said, “If a player is 100 percent attentive on the ground and he misses a catch despite that, I don’t have a problem. Of course, I also want to see how many catches he took during practice before that… If he had a problem somewhere whether he is making efforts to get better or not. I used to focus on all these aspects instead of just focusing on that a catch was dropped. Maybe we lost a game because of that but the effort was always to try to step into their shoes,” explained the 41-year-old.”
“I am also human. I would feel the same way inside as you all felt. When you go out and play a match among yourselves, you would feel bad. We represent our country, so we would feel worse. But we always try to control our emotions,” he further added.
While talking about the criticism, Ms Dhoni further expressed, “Sitting on the outside, it’s always easy to say we should have played in a certain way but it’s not easy. We are representing our country but the opposition players are also representing their country. They are there to play the game and a lot of times, there will be ups and downs.”