5 Courageous decisions taken by Indian captains in cricket history

Unlike football and a few other sports, the captains play a very active and a crucial role in cricket. There are key decisions to be made, ones which could possibly turn them into heroes or make them targets as well. Indian cricket has had multiple such moments where they’ve seen both sides of the coin and have faced both success and failure during crunch moments.

There have been courageous calls made by captains which have turned a certain player’s career upside down and has had a huge impact on their careers like Sourav Ganguly and MS Dhoni promoting Virender Sehwag and Rohit Sharma respectively to open the batting. There have been quite a few such moments.

But here we are looking at calls made by captains that changed the course of a particular game upside down. These calls have had a big role to play in Indian cricket. Here’s a look at some of the big and courageous calls taken by captains.

Here are such five decisions: 

1. MS Dhoni giving Joginder Sharma the final over in 2007 World T20

India went in to the inaugural World T20 in 2007 without some of the big stars. It was MS Dhoni leading a young team and no one had any expectations from them. They surprised most people by reaching the final. In the final, they faced arch-rivals Pakistan.

Gautam Gambhir’s excellent knock of 75 and Rohit’s Sharma’s quickfire cameo (30 of 16 balls) propelled India to 157/5. It was then a collective effort with the ball that kept India ahead. They kept chipping away with wickets but it was Misbah-ul-Haq who kept Pakistan in the hunt. With 13 runs required off the final over (one wicket remaining), Dhoni had a choice to make between Harbhajan Singh and Joginder Sharma.

The off-spinner had gone for 36 runs in his three overs but was more experienced out of the two. Sharma had done a decent job but could’ve well be found out at the death. However, Dhoni backed Joginder to deliver. The Haryana pacer conceded a wide and a six before he dismissed Misbah on the third ball of the over to clinch the World T20 title for India.