It was me who said that and I still stand by it. If Dhoni had a pool of bowlers that has Aaron, Yadav, Mohit, Vinay Kumar and RP Singh, he would pick the latter 3 ahead of the first two 9 out of ten times and keep picking them till they get smashed for say 90 in 9 overs or something. Being medium pace does`nt mean you are automatically economical. Guys like Vinay Kumar, Irfan Pathan (current version) and Balaji might do okay initially but at their pace its easy to line them up and take them for 30 in an over at any stage. Dhoni does not offer the same long rope to anyone with decent pace. It has a lot to do with his perception. A captain like Ganguly would pick the quicker bowlers ahead of the Vinay Kumar genre of bowlers in his day. That is how we unearthed Zaheer, Irfan, Nehra (2003 WC days), Balaji (before his abdominal injury) and Sreesanth/Munaf.
Then you are wrong.
Without even going into how factually inaccurate that is, MSD has always picked bowlers he thinks, are the best to win a match. Just look at his record doesn't suggest his bowlers keep getting carted all the time all over the park. With all MSD has won, I think I will take his opinion on who is the best bowler for the match, over yours, thank you very much.
We all have opinions on line ups and we all have times when we think the Captain is being right wrong or a muppet, that is waht makes watching cricket fun. But at some point one needs to draw the line. One cannot forget that at the end of the day, its all just fan opinions, and one cannot be foolish enough to think that the fan sitting in his house, never having worked with the team, not knowing how someone is feeling on that day, how the previous days net session went,
actually knows better than the captain about who should be playing.
I hear the commentators go oh the captain should put a gully, oh the captain should put a third man, I mean has the captain, any captain not heard of these positions? The fans just feed off the commentary and go mental and at the same time become very wise and the best tacticians in the game. Any gap the ball goes in the commentators would put a fielder there. Any move that doesn't work the commentators would have not made it. They are always wise after the event, and so is everyone watching. A captain doesn't have that luxury.
Even the weakest of teams, and worst of captains even at club level knows more than what an armchair critic has to offer. Everything you can suggest, would have already crossed even the club captain's mind, let alone the mind of a captain who has won every major trophy this game has to offer.
