What’s the story
Muttiah Muralitharan has labelled Mahendra Singh Dhoni as “one of the best” Indian cricket captains. "The three years I played under his (Dhoni’s) captaincy in Chennai Super Kings, I never saw any arrogance from Dhoni. He was always down to earth and was open to taking advice from senior players like me and Michael Hussey,” said the spin wizard.
The Sri Lankan bowler also acknowledged the valuable contributions made by Sourav Ganguly to Indian cricket and considered him to be a great captain.
In case you didn’t know...
A debate has brewed up over who is India’s best captain ever since Ravi Shastri hailed Dhoni as the best ever and omitted Ganguly’s name from his list of best Indian skippers.
The 44-year-old Sri Lankan played under Dhoni in the IPL for three seasons at the Chennai Super Kings. Muralitharan finished as the side’s leading wicket-taker on all the three occasions.
The heart of the matter
Muralitharan was speaking at a program in Kolkata where he will supervise the spinners under the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) Vision 2020 program. The great spinner recalled his good-old days when he played under Dhoni.
The spinner believed that Dhoni, being such a big star always maintained a low profile.
The Sri Lankan, meanwhile, distanced himself from drawing comparisons between Dhoni and Ganguly over who was the better captain. Murali felt that maybe Shastri had missed Ganguly’s name because the Sri Lankan considered Ganguly to be one of the great Indian captains.
The only man to take 800 wickets in tests also warned Virat Kohli and India to not be complacent against England in the limited overs series. The off-spinner also expressed that he is expecting Kohli to go up to Dhoni for advice on the field.
Sportskeeda’s take
A question like “who is the better of the two?” can be a misleading one. Drawing comparisons between two captains or two players, for that matter, in the quest for finding an answer is not possible. The contributions of each player toward taking his team forward are based on a various set of circumstances which could be almost impossible to analyse.
Apart from the circumstances, a personal prejudice of the person expressing his opinion could also be one of the reasons
Dhoni and Ganguly, both have been great servants of the Indian cricket. Both of them deserve every bit of respect and appreciation from cricketing greats like Muttiah Muralitharan.
Brand-new app in a brand-new avatar! Download Cric Rocket for fast cricket scores, rocket flicks, super notifications and much more!
