Gary Kirsten Was the Mastermind Behind Dhoni’s Promotion in World Cup Final

Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the Indian captain, was merely giving credit where credit was due when he spoke about the pivotal decision that saw the Indian captain play an elevated role in India winning the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011.

Gary Kirsten, Mahendra Singh Dhoni

Dhoni has been often hailed as a cool captain, one who never lets his frustration get to him and someone who is a shrewd reader and thinker of the game. Dhoni revealed another quality about him at the NDTV Indian of the Year Awards when he was honest enough to admit that one of the most important decisions that affected the final result of that historical final was that of the then Indian coach.

The Indian cricket team were attending the television channel’s awards function to collect the India’s Heroes of the Year 2011 awards for winning the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 after twenty-eight years since Kapil Dev’s Indian cricket team won the trophy in 1983 in England. Speaking on the occasion, Dhoni revealed that though he had not intended to promote himself ahead of Yuvraj Singh in the batting order, it was Gary Kirsten, the then Indian coach, who dropped the idea in his mind.

Under Kirsten, India reached the no.1 Test team status and tasted tremendous success. And while Kirsten himself has been highly regarded in that regard in his first international assignment and is now the South African cricket coach as a result of it, it was considered that the combination of Kirsten and Dhoni as coach and captain respectively worked beautifully to India’s advantage.

Dhoni’s promotion allowed him to negotiate the spin on offer from Sri Lanka and it helped that having captained the Chennai Super Kings in the IPL with Muttiah Muralitharan as part of the team composition helped him work his methodology to perfection, forging two important partnerships in the course of the match with Gautam Gambhir and Yuvraj Singh to give India a tremendous hype not experienced in a long time.

While Dhoni has been hailed for several of his ingenuous decisions that border on gambling, Dhoni was candid enough to give Kirsten credit for plotting India’s success plan although he himself executed the idea to perfection thereafter.