Mahendra Singh Dhoni may have impressed with his leadership skills in the one-dayers but burdening him with the Test captaincy would be asking for too much from the youngster, feel former skipper Ravi Shastri and former India coach Greg Chappell.
Shastri, who served as India’s interim Cricket Manager during the Bangladesh tour, said Dhoni had proved his mettle as skipper but it was not the right time to anoint him Test captain. “It will put him under a lot of pressure.
In future he may do it but not at this moment. He has a lot of talent but I think he is not ready for this responsibility now,” Shastri, also the Chairman of the National Cricket Academy, said here on Tuesday.
Another year
Chappell too concurred with the former all-rounder saying Dhoni should gain another year’s experience as captain in one-day and Twenty20 cricket before taking on the role at the Test level.
India have been without a Test captain since Rahul Dravid quit the post after the England tour and Sachin Tendulkar too has turned down the offer to lead the side. Shastri advocated having separate captains for the Test and ODI teams.
“He (Dhoni) is doing his apprenticeship in the limited-over forms of the game. It won’t be long before I think he is ready for (the captaincy of) all three,” Chappell told a television channel on Tuesday.
“Probably another 12 months or more I think before he is perhaps ready for all three of them,” added Chappell.
Dhoni, who led a young team to success in the Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa, was appointed captain of the one-day team for 12 matches concluding with the ongoing five-match series against Pakistan.
‘Potential leader’
India play three Tests against Pakistan at home starting later this month before touring Australia for a much-anticipated four-Test series.
“A tour of Australia behind him will just finish him off nicely as a cricketer and as a potential leader,” said Chappell, who quit as India coach after their first-round exit in the one-day World Cup in the Caribbean in March.
Apart from Test captain, the Indian team is also without a full-time coach but Shastri, part of the Board’s coach selection committee, said it would not be wise to rush the process.
“There is no need to rush things to get a coach. We need to pick the ideal person. We just can’t take anybody and make him the coach. And the team is winning, so why the tension? We’ll wait for the right time and the right man for the job,” he added.
