The great Indian dream
India's CB Series campaign reflects the personality of Mahendra Singh Dhoni according to the editors at the Hindu .
Nishi Narayanan
25-Feb-2013
AFP
India's CB Series campaign reflects the personality of Mahendra Singh Dhoni according to the editors at the Hindu.
India played a brand of one-day cricket that might have been fashioned by Dhoni: nerveless, intuitive, street-smart. On the other hand, Australia’s fallibility was mirrored in its captain, Ricky Ponting. He was part of a collective batting failure, produced by fatigue and triggered by the swinging white ball.
In Hindustan Times Seema Goswami writes that the Great Indian Dream is the game of cricket itself.
In many ways, cricket has become the fastest route to social mobility. Virender Sehwag, who had to change two buses to get to cricket practice at the Kotla from his home in Najafgarh, where his father traded in seeds and grains, is now the toast of Delhi high society. Yuvraj Singh and Dhoni share the stage with Shah Rukh at events, with King Khan even teaching them a few good dance moves. Harbhajan Singh, who initially couldn’t follow what was said in team meetings because he didn’t understand English, can now hold his own against the combined might of the Australian media.
And in the Indian Express, Kunal Pradhan analyses the similarities and differences between Sourav Ganguly and Dhoni as captain.
At a macro level, Dhoni is very similar to Ganguly. They both fought for their players, they both defied the age-old law of parochialism, they were both sources of inspiration to a burgeoning new India ...
On a micro level, however, the two skippers could not be more different. Ganguly was hard, in-your-face, loud and audacious. Dhoni is cool, calm, and in control of not just his side but also his own conduct.
"It is debatable if any individual, Muttiah Muralitharan included, has had to endure the ordeal Harbhajan was systematically subjected to by the collective might of the Australian cricket team, the so-called sporting Australian public, and the completely prejudiced Australian media," writes R Kaushik in the Deccan Herald.
Nishi Narayanan is a staff writer at ESPNcricinfo