MS Dhoni wants to continue as Indian captain till 2015 World Cup

MS Dhoni is hopeful of his body coping up with the demands

Mahendra Singh Dhoni, sounding extremely positive of his fitness levels, has revealed his intentions of looking forward to captaining India in all the three formats of the game for the foreseeable future.

The Indian captain seems to be of the belief that there would not be enough time for his replacement to take over with the World Cup in one year time. He said: “I think, it’s a point of no return with the World Cup literally one year away from now. It won’t give a new guy the ideal time to play, at least, 70-80-90 games beginning to the World Cup that’s what we would like to have him play before the World Cup.”

“I understand the pressure, it’s not always that you turn up and at the same time, you get the kind of things which give you more experience than the others. So, we have to go through it.”

Perhaps his fitness should be the biggest takeaway for Indian fans as he responded in good spirits when questions were thrown at him regarding how his body is taking up the excess workload. The wicketkeeper-batsman said: “I was really fortunate to see where I am right now with the amount of cricket that we are playing these days. As of now, it’s looking good. The body is closely knit together. How it will be (in future), I don’t know but so far so good.”

Reflecting on the recently concluded tour of South Africa, he said: “Yes, we had some tough times. We had a bad session. We had one really bad session because of which we were on the losing side.”

“I think the process is more important. The last couple of series before the South African series were I can’t even say a decent or a bad one, it can go worse than that, but the good thing is that at least we know the players are there. We had a lot of good sessions in South Africa.

“It’s a process where we have to improve and also the fact that now we will be continuously playing out of India, so it will give more exposure to the players. Most of the players, who are part of the side barring a few, they have not played, may be, more than five Test matches outside India. I know they will take some time but the overall performance was good.”

When asked if dismissing an opposition twice in overseas Test matches is an issue, according to NDTV, he responded by saying: “We have got the same amount of talent. We have bowlers who can take 20 wickets but still this is one area where we need to improve.”

Dhoni had an interesting point to make about Indian bowlers struggling only when the pitches in overseas do not respond to his bowlers. The 32-year-old said: “Here, I am talking about majority of bowlers, that’s one area where we have to learn. We have seen in the past also, if there’s help, then we will get 20 wickets, we have to make sure we get them. Our bowlers have done exceptionally well. Outside India, at times, you get wickets where we have to hit the deck hard and that goes completely opposite to what our bowlers actually bowl.