The captain’s crown comes with its thorns. And according to Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Ravindra Jadeja, a top-rated all-rounder in white-ball cricket, bled because his head couldn’t carry the burden of captaincy.
After a string of unimpressive showings as a team, the Chennai Super Kings management decided to hand back the reins of captaincy to Dhoni. The veteran led Chennai to a 13-run win against the Sunrisers Hyderabad on Sunday in his first game as skipper this season.
Jadeja didn’t have much to do in that game, but he bowled economically. Dhoni says Jadeja, the player, is invaluable to Chennai.
“What’s important is once you become the captain, you have to take care of a lot of things and that also includes taking care of your own game. With him (Jadeja), his mind was working a lot, and it’s not easy to control your mind as it’s the strongest feature,” Dhoni said at the post-match presentation on Sunday.
“Once the mind starts working, it doesn’t really stop. So what happens is, the individual isn’t able to relax.
“What I felt was that it was having an effect on his (Jadeja’s) game. When he was going in to bat or when it came to his preparation, he felt that burden which was affecting his game.
“...Spoon-feeding doesn’t really help a captain. On the field you have to take those crucial decisions and you have to take responsibility for those decisions.
“Besides, I would love to have Jadeja as a bowler, as a batter and a fielder. Even if you’re relieved of captaincy, and you are at your best, that’s what we really want because we were also losing out on a great fielder, which he really is.
“We’re struggling for a deep mid-wicket fielder. We have dropped 17-18 catches so far and it’s a matter of concern,” the Chennai captain elaborated.
The franchise, too, agrees with skipper Dhoni’s views on Jadeja. “Well, MS knows better than any other individual. So what he said is the correct view as a captain. And we respect that view. That’s it,” Super Kings CEO Kasi Viswanathan told The Telegraph on Monday.
Jadeja, though, didn’t get much to do with the bat in Sunday’s game. Going in at No.4 in the final over of Chennai’s innings, he faced only one ball and remained not out on 1. However, he should have had the wicket of Sunrisers captain Kane Williamson had Dhoni held on to the faint edge.
Crucial lesson
In spite of the team’s disappointing showing under his captaincy, Jadeja needs to look at his first captaincy experience as a lesson learnt. By doing so, he may well fare better if and when trusted with the job again.
“The transition for everybody may not be as smooth as that of Rohit Sharma. Rohit also took the captaincy midway through IPL 2013 (when Ricky Ponting handed it over to him),” former national selector Devang Gandhi said.
“You need to introspect where exactly you went wrong. You have to learn from failures and then if you introspect, it can help you re-strategise and come good next time,” Devang, also a former Bengal captain, added.
