Captain of India
Dhoni was named the captain of India Twenty 20 squad for the inaugural ICC World Twenty20 held in South Africa in September 2007. India were crowned champions as Dhoni led the team to victory against Pakistan in a thrilling contest. He, then went on to become the ODI captain of the Indian team for the seven-match ODI series against Australia in September 2007. He made his debut as full-time Test captain of India during the fourth and final test against Australia at Nagpur in November 2008 replacing Anil Kumble who was injured in the third test and who then announced his retirement. Dhoni was vice-captain in this series up to that point. India eventually won that Test thus clinching the series 2–0 and retained the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Dhoni had previously captained India on a stand-in basis against South Africa and Australia in 2008 and 2009 respectively.
It was under his captaincy that India climbed to No. 1 in the ICC Test Rankings in December 2009. After that he managed to lead India in a series-levelling world championship of Tests against the South Africans in February 2010.
After winning the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup for India against Sri Lanka on 2 April 2011 with his match winning knock of unbeaten 91, Tendulkar heaped praises on Dhoni, claiming him to be the best captain he has played under. Tendulkar mentioned that it was Dhoni's calm influence that was rubbing off on all his team-mates and even under such extreme pressure from every corner the way Dhoni handles it and brings the best out of him was just incredible. Saurav Ganguly also said in an interview to a news channel that Dhoni is the all time greatest captain of India and he has a great record to support this credential.
Read more about this topic: Mahendra Singh Dhoni
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