Leader By Instinct Mahendra Singh Dhoni's Success Story

He led a young Indian team to victory in the inaugural T-20 Cricket Championship in September 2007. In December 2009, India became the top-ranked Test team in the world for the first time under his captaincy. The team still retains that spot. He captained Chennai Super Kings (CSK) - his Indian Premier League team - to victory in April 2010 and followed it up by lifting the Champions League Trophy for the same team in September. The mother of all victories came in early April this year: India won the ICC Cricket World Cup after 28 years.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni is the only captain in the world to have tasted success in all formats of the game, and that too in just four years. No wonder, batting legend Sachin Tendulkar calls the 29-year-old the best among the nine captains he has played under in his 21-year career. Australian great Greg Chappell calls Dhoni the best captain in the world today. Former Indian skipper Kapil Dev, who led the country to its first major cricketing triumph - the 1983 Prudential World Cup - has no qualms in accepting that Dhoni is a better captain.

he transformation of MSD, as he is often called, from a long-haired pinchhitter to a suave captain could not have been more dramatic. He burst into Indian cricket in 2004 as a small-town boy with a penchant for whacking the ball out of the ground with his trademark 'helicopter shot'. Captaincy came his way in September 2007 when he was appointed skipper for the Twenty20 World Cup championship. India won the tournament.

Soon after, he was given charge of the team in the other two formats of the game too - one day internationals and Test cricket. (Sure, there have been temporary stumbles, like the exit at the league stage in the 2010 T-20 world championship.) The manner in which he has gone about transforming a formerly 'also ran' team into the best in the world offers valuable lessons in management and leadership.

Keep it simple, silly
Unlike most other captains today, Dhoni does not believe in strategising excessively before a match. In fact, he seldom watches match videos or pores over statistics. Team meetings on match days are mostly standin sessions lasting no more than 10 minutes, say colleagues. "I like to keep things simple. Cricket is a simple sport and you complicate it by thinking too much. More you think, more complex it becomes,'' Captain Cool said at a press conference days after winning the ICC World Cup.

Dhoni employs sleep as an effective tool to beat pre-match tension. On the day of a big match, people close to him reveal, he wakes up just two hours before the match starts. Keeping it simple also helps him to remain calm in live wire situations. Former Australian wicketkeeper-batsman and Dhoni's idol Adam Gilchrist recently said the Indian skipper's biggest plus point was his ability to remain calm under pressure.

Posted in: Breaking News