Mahendra Singh Dhoni becomes the most successful Indian Test captain
After the Hyderabad win in the second Test against Australia, Mahendra Singh Dhoni became the most successful Test captain for India by winning the most number of matches. Under Dhoni's captaincy, India has now won 22 Tests - one more than Saurav Ganguly. This takes Dhoni's winning percentage to 48.88%.
Dhoni has captained India in 45 matches and had to face defeat in 12 matches while 11 matches ended in a draw. The last two matches against Australia were really special for Dhoni as the wins registered by India were some of the best.
The first match was special for Dhoni as it gave him his career best score of a double century and also the man of the match.
In the second match, India has recorded one of the most famous wins. India has hardly any win to its credit that came on the fourth day and with an innings.
Saurav Ganguly has captained India in 49 Tests. The 21 wins that are his belt came in these Test matches. Under his captaincy, India lost 13 Tests. The 15 drawn matches give Ganguly a winning percentage of 42.86.
Mohd. Azharuddin comes in the third place. Having captained India in 47 Test matches, India won 14 under his captaincy and lost as many matches. With 19 draws Azhar has a percentage of 29.79. It looks a big slump from Ganguly’s 42.86%.
The fourth in the list of India’s most successful Test captains is Tiger Pataudi. Pataudi led India in 40 Tests. However, India was able to win just 9 Tests under his captaincy. India lost 19 matches when Tiger was the captain and achieved a draw in 12 matches with a winning percentage of 22.5.
The fifth in the list is the Little Master Sunil Gavaskar. Gavaskar headed the Indian team in 47 Test matches. However, he too achieved the same number of wins as that of Tiger Pataudi – 9. Gavaskar has 8 wins to his credit. However, he has the most number of drawn matches against his name. There are a total of 30 drawn Tests that Gavaskar led India to.
Rahul Dravid, Bishan Singh Bedi, Ajit Wadekar, Sachin Tendulkar and Kapil Dev are the next five captains that have won Test matches for India when they were the captains. All the names are in the descending order of the winning percentage. So, this shows that Rahul Dravid has won lesser matches for India than Sunil Gavaskar. Bishan Singh Bedi has won lesser than Rahul Dravid and so on.
Incidentally, Dhoni has also been the most successful captain for India against Australia. He has led India to 6 wins out of 9 while losing the other 3. That means, every match that Dhoni has played against Australia as a captain, have seen results. That simply means that Dhoni wins 2 out of 3 matches against Australia. Now, if he keeps going strong, he may boost his record even further.
That looks practically possible after seeing the form in which Team India is!
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