Former South Africa skipper points difference between MS Dhoni and Sourav Ganguly's captaincy

Mahendra Singh Dhoni played his first ever game for India under Sourav Ganguly, however former South Africa captain Graeme Smith is of the opinion that India would have won a lot of trophies had the wicketkeeper batsman played more under Ganguly. MS Dhoni made his debut in 2004, less than a year before Sourav Ganguly was removed removed as captain.

Sourav Ganguly led the men in blue between 2000 and 2005, with two of his biggest exploits being winning the Natwest Trophy in 2002 and reaching the final of the World Cup 2003. Under Ganguly’s leadership, players like Ajay Ratra, Vijay Dahiya, Rahul Dravid and Parthiv Patel were the ones who mostly kept wickets and the former Proteas skipper is confident that India’s trophy cabinet under Ganguly could have boosted had MS Dhoni played long under him.

“The biggest difference between Dada’s captaincy and MS’s captaincy is MS, the player for me. I think in that middle order, the ability to close games, win games, finish games in that calm that he brought to the people around him. I think for me, that is probably the biggest difference between the two heroes, is MS Dhoni,” Smith said on the Cricket Connected.

“If Dada had an MS type player, his team was slightly more developed, I think you would have seen him win plenty more trophies. Dada was blessed to play or not blessed to play in an era where Australian cricket was at the forefront and dominating the world game as well which at the time the team had won the most during that period.”

The former South African skipper compared the batting of Dhoni and Ganguly, saying that Ganguly was much tougher Test batsman. But when it comes to limited over cricket, Dhoni is his choice, Ganguly has 11363 ODI runs from 311 ODIs, while Dhoni has scored 10773 runs from 350 games. In Tests, Ganguly, with 7212 runs is way ahead of MS Dhoni (4876 runs) although the former left-hander did play 23 matches more.

“From my perspective, it’s always difficult to move away from an opening batsman and a captain as challenging,” the former South Africa captain said. “I agree that when it comes to Test cricket, having played against MS, you would always felt that you had an opportunity to work him over, specially away and out of India, but I think when it comes to Test cricket, I’ll have to sit with Dada, but one-day cricket, certainly MS is my man.”

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