Former India skipper, MS Dhoni is widely acknowledged as one of the finest captains to have ever played the game. Under his captaincy, India won the top competitions in all formats and achieved the No.1 Test ranking for the first time in the history of Indian cricket.
Dhoni has captained India for 60 Tests – most by any skipper for India and sixth overall. Under MSD’s leadership, India won 27 Tests which is second best after Virat Kohli, who currently has 33 wins to his name.
However, former opener Gautam Gambhir believes that the credit of Dhoni’s successful stint as Test captain goes to Zaheer Khan. Gambhir said that Zaheer was one of the biggest factors behind Dhoni’s rise as India’s Test captain.
Gambhir heaped praises on Zaheer and rated him as India’s “best world-class bowler”. The Delhi-lad also hailed Sourav Ganguly’s role in transforming the left-arm pacer into a quality bowler which eventually helped Dhoni.
“The reason Dhoni became such a successful captain in Test cricket is because of Zaheer Khan. He was a big blessing that Dhoni got, for which credit goes to Ganguly. In my opinion, Zaheer has been India’s best world-class bowler,” said Gambhir on the Cricket Connected Show on Star Sports.
Gambhir termed Dhoni as a lucky captain in ODIs. The cricketer-turned-politician claimed that the Ranchi-born had the best team when he captained the 2011 World Cup.
“Dhoni has been a fortunate captain because he got an amazing team in every format,” Gambhir said. “Captaining 2011 World Cup team was very easy for Dhoni because we had players like Sachin, Sehwag, myself, Yuvraj, Yusuf, Virat, so he had got the best teams, while Ganguly had to work very hard for it, and as a result, Dhoni won so many trophies,” added Gambhir.
