It was a very unlikely that the high bureaucrats and the always aloof Union Sports Ministry of India were going to let an opportunity to associate themselves with the hottest sports commodity in India right now pass and so when the name of M S Dhoni was proposed for the highest award for sportsperson in India, they duly grabbed the chance. This would mean a gala function, plenty of publicity and of course a little side note at the bottom which assures that all the men who have no clue about sports yet tinker with it constantly are assured of good press for once. Mahendra Singh Dhoni has managed to achieve what Rahul Dravid and Yuvraj Singh failed to do in two successive years and that is safely glove a prestigious award for the cricketing fraternity. So what is its significance?

M S Dhoni, India’s T-20 World Cup winning captain and the man who led India to the very special CB Series win in Australia, was awarded the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna- the highest award for sportsperson in India. (Highest sporting honor named after a politician- Some sporting culture, but we will not delve in to that today) Dhoni seemed pretty pleased about it and went to offer prayers in the famous Deori temple in Ranchi and he had every right to be elated. This becomes all the more special when you consider that Rahul Dravid’s name was put forward for the same award and Yuvraj Singh’s name was sent in for the Arjuna in the past two years and the Union Sports Ministry shot both the names down the proposals.

As much as one feels happy for the lad from Jharkhand one must question the rationale of such sporting honors in this country. For starters, Dhoni is only the second cricketer to have received the award and there are no prizes for guessing who the first was. Sachin Tendulkar has been the singular icon of India’s sporting fraternity for over a couple of decades now and someone who has been consistently on top of his chosen craft with credentials that are both unparallel on and off the field. Sachin being conferred the award was only natural considering his awesome performances and his incredible consistency.

When it comes to the case of M S Dhoni though, there is little logic behind the highest award being conferred on him. For starters, Cricket is a team sport and when you are conferring such a high honor on an individual basis your scale of judging probably needs to go up. If the reason for the award was only ‘leading India in to T-20 World Cup and CB Series wins’, then to me both of them sound like collective team efforts and not so much as “Only Dhoni’s Achievments”.

Any past player will tell you that most often “A captain is only as good as his team” and while some have the ability to lift their team and produce the best out of them that alone really does not merit for an individual accolade. Dhoni was indeed captain cool, but his own performance with the bat in both those famous series wins was ‘Iffy’ at best and guys like Adam Gilchrist themselves stating that the “two CB Series finals were almost single handedly won by Sachin”, tells you some story.

This is not to put condemn Dhoni in any sense but just that when you happen to give away your nation’s greatest sporting honor choosing to pick glamour over performance while so many other sports and sportsmen linger in shadow is sad. While sportsmen in team sports should also be rewarded individually, an honor of this magnitude probably must be conferred with more thought put in to it. Team sports do produce great sportsmen, men like Pele, Jordan, Maradona, Bradman and Tendulkar. With team success as reason and with a record as pale as his away from home, the ministry might have set a bad precedent.

But as said earlier, awards matter little in Indian Cricket and it is performances day in and day out that would finally have a say. This is in no way putting Dhoni down as you have to be only a fool to not accept an honor like this. Congrats to Dhoni and hopefully now that the honor is bestowed upon him, he will take his game to another level (in Tests especially) and shut my mouth up by accumulating the credentials befitting the honor in the next few years. Good Luck!