Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Where is Dhoni Standing?

There's been a lot of talk on MS Dhoni's place in the team. In the recently concluded T20 between India and West Indies, India played 3 wicketkeepers (+1 can be wk in Kedhar Jadhav) MS Dhoni, Dinesh Kartick & Pant. It was MSD, who stood behind the stumps. There is no doubt in anybody's mind who is the best in India with the keeping gloves on. But can the same be told when it comes to his batting?

MS Dhoni's overall stats:


The stats look very great!
The average looks even better!
28% of his time at crease he has remained not out.

If not outs are not considered then this average drops to 37.24.
This makes his just an average batsman and also not fair on his to not consider his not outs.

MSD Strike rate


Overall the strike rate looks good. The above picture does not give in much information and his average SR over time looks stable



In the initial two years of MSD's career he was striking above run a ball. Off late the difference between run balls faced and runs scored are on the high. Since 2010 MSD's overall strike rate has come below 90.



Dropped from the team 

It is well known that Dhoni wanted to drop 3 senior players from the team but we can never be sure who were those three. Dravid, Sehwag and Gambhir were among the greats who where dropped from the team under Dhoni s captaincy.



*Dravid scored 527 runs in last 20 innings in 2007 before he was dropped from the team. Dravid has later played in 2009 and 2011 as well.
Comparing last 20 innings of MSD with other players who were dropped along with Tendulkar and Kohli's last 20 innings. Only Dravid has performed slightly bad compared to Dhoni and the rest have better numbers.

Each of the have played in different time span where the team has been performing differently, then we should have to compare the team performance as well.

The same set of players when compared with the Team's batting average, Dhoni has the worse difference. This above table clearly shows the Tendulkar and Kohli have taken responsibility for the team's average as well. 

The big question is what does MSD think, where is he Standing?