Posts Tagged ‘Dhoni’

Dhoni and Sakshi set to get married Tonight!

So all those rumours will finally be put to rest tonight. And we now know for sure that it wasn’t the Bollywood beauty Deepika Padukone who had stolen the Indian captain’s heart, but an old school friend no one even had an iota of knowledge about.

Sakshi Singh Rawat and MS Dhoni attended the same school in Ranchi – DAV, Shamily, and that is where the first seeds of love were planted. Deepika came in much later, and Yuvraj’s failure at wooing her had nothing to do with Dhoni at all.

Sakshi is a hotel management graduate. She completed her graduation from IHM, Aurangabad.

It was at a Bipasha Basu party that Dhoni and Sakshi met again and things blossomed further. Apparently, Sakshi was there at the party as a guest of John Abraham.

The duo were supposed to take the marriage vows only in October, but India’s cramped cricket calendar during that period meant that Dhoni had to prepone his wedding date, which is as early as tonight. The other option could have been to push the date further ahead, but I guess the Indian captain was in a bit of a hurry this time around!

8 Batsmen + 3 Bowlers: Is Dhoni introducing a new ODI strategy?

A decade or so back, some captain decided to sacrifice the fifth bowler in his One Day team to bring in an extra batsman. Soon, it became the norm. Especially for India, which has failed to produce a quality all-rounder since Kapil Dev made an exit – it became normal to see part-timers such as Sachin, Ganguly, Yuvraj and Sehwag putting in 10 overs between them. With wickets across the world becoming flatter and flatter, and the influence of the bowler diminishing in the shorter version of the game, is the India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni now heralding the next logical step?

In the India vs South Africa 1st One Day International played at Jaipur this last Sunday, India entered the match with only 3 specialist bowlers – Sreesanth, Nehra and Praveen Kumar. The part-timers’ role had now increased from 10 to 20 overs, and the immediate success of this strategy is only further going to bolster Dhoni’s brave new attempt. I would be surprised if India fields in a fourth bowler in the 2nd One Day tomorrow at the Captain Roop Singh Stadium in Gwalior. If at all there is a change, it may be one of the pacers making way for a spinner.

While it may seem interesting at the moment, this may well begin a most dangerous trend. Already we are seeing a shrinkage in the pool of quality bowlers – if youngsters see that bowlers have only a 3/11 chance of making it to the final XI, what motivation will they have to hone this craft? More and more youngsters will shift allegiance to batting, and what that will do to the long term prospects of the game shouldn’t be too difficult to fathom. Bowlers will soon become an ‘endangered species’.

Cricket is a contest of bat and ball, and the last decade has already seen the batsmen winning this contest all too easily. If this bridge between the quality of batting and bowling widens further, we may not be left with much of a contest in the future, and that indeed will be sad for cricket.

Dhoni banned for 2 one days because of slow over rate

ICC Match Referee Jeff Crowe has slapped a 2 one-day match ban on India captain M S Dhoni. The reason cited was the slow over rate of the India team in the ongoing India vs Sri Lanka series. In the 2nd one-day at Nagpur, the Indian team took 45 minutes over the allowed time to bowl their quota of 50 overs. Frequent discussions between various players of the Indian team as they planned bowling and fielding attacks to stop the Lankans caused the delay, as per the match referee.

Dhoni will have a right to appeal against the ban, but I doubt if Dhoni or BCCI will exercise that option.