MS Dhoni Batting At No. 3 Would Have Broken Most Records, Says Gautam Gambhir
NEW DELHI : Former India skipper, MS Dhoni is highly regarded as one of the finest captains to have ever played the game. Under his captaincy, India won the top competitions in all formats, for instance: the No.1 Test ranking for 18 months, the 50-over World Cup in 2011 and the T20 World Cup on his captaincy debut in 2007.
Not only in leadership, but Dhoni was also equally brilliant with the willow. His charisma can be expressed with the fact that despite playing mostly at the number 6 position, the Ranchi-born has smashed more than 10,000 runs in ODIs.
It is a phenomenal feat as in ODI cricket, batsmen who have reached the landmark of 10k runs are mostly the top-order batters. So, this is enough to explain that if MSD was a top-order player, he might’ve scored much more runs.
According to Gambhir, with the kind of flat pitches on offer and quality of current bowling attacks in world cricket now, the Jharkhand dasher could have broken most of the records had he batted at three. “Probably, I would have taken MS Dhoni. MS Dhoni batting at No. 3 on flat wickets, with the quality of bowling attack now in world cricket.
“Look at Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, West Indies, in the current situation, with the kind of quality in international cricket there is, MS Dhoni would have probably broken most of the records,” added the southpaw, who is a member of both 2007 and 2011 World Cup winning Indian team.
Speaking about the same, Dhoni’s former teammate Gautam Gambhir believes that ‘Captain Cool’ could have been a legendary batsman had he continued to bat at number 3. In a Star Sports show ‘Cricket Connected’, Gambhir said that if captaincy wasn’t handed over to Dhoni, then he would have batted in the top order and broken many records. Gambhir opined that if Dhoni had batted at number three, fans would have seen an entirely different avatar of Dhoni.
However former India speedster Irfan Pathan had a different viewpoint. Pathan said that if one compares Dhoni to Kohli at number three, Kohli would have been a better option. “But MS had all the chance to bat at No. 3, he didn’t. Look, I really believe that if you compare Virat and Mahendra Singh Dhoni batting at No. 3, I still feel Virat has a better technique.
“There’s nothing that I am taking away from Mahendra Singh Dhoni, obviously he has been an absolute legend of the game. Everyone has their own opinion. I will still take Virat any day,” said Pathan on the same show.
(Bureau Report with Agency Inputs ).
