(Image via indiatvnews.com)
Dhoni led Team India has been on a losing streak in the shorter formats of the game for quite some time. Sometimes the bowling flops, sometimes both batting and bowling flop and Dhoni has to exercise his grey cells later in the press conference, trotting out novel excuses each and every time.
But the recent back to back T-20 defeats have been the last straw. As it is, Dhoni is under the pump, what with Srini mama’s ouster and CSK’s termination, which has drastically altered dynamics in the dressing room. CSK players are now getting second class treatment in the dressing room compared to RCB players, according to sources. “Earlier, RCB used to be the butt of jokes. Now, it’s the other way round. Everyone is after us,” a CSK member of the national team said on conditions of very strict anonymity. And it hasn’t helped either that rumors of Dhoni joining Bhajji in the team’s margdarshak mandal have been doing the rounds.
Given the trying circumstances, the beleaguered skipper has requested the BCCI for an assistant analysis coach who can at least take the analysis burden off him so that he can focus on his wicket-keeping and batting and not worry about what reasons to give at the press conference later in case of yet another flop show.
“Well of course I am sick and tired of analyzing our team’s defeats,” a fatigued Dhoni told The UnReal Times. “There are only so many ways in which I can say that we sucked. This is a full time job by itself and we need an assistant ‘reasons for defeat’ analysis coach in addition to team director, fielding coach, physiotherapist, batting coach, bowling coach….actually, we don’t really require a bowling coach with this attack,” Dhoni said.
The BCCI has agreed to Dhoni’s SOS and has invited applications. “We agree with Dhoni. The position of the defeat analysis coach with the national team is a highly demanding one. Each and every loss has its unique reasons. Sometime it could be the dew factor, sometimes grass on the pitch, and on some occasions, it could be bad karma. So the analysis coach has to possess a very good sense of imagination, expertise in econometrics and statistics and a good grounding in philosophy as well. We can’t have poor Dhoni trying his hand at philosophy each and every time,” BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur said.
Here’s hoping the appointment of a ‘reasons for defeat’ analysis coach frees up Dhoni’s bandwidth for doing what he does best – awesomely ugly heaves with the bat that, to quote the great Shastri, “send the ball to the ropes like a tracer bullet”.