MS Dhoni would not have become such great player without Ganguly's sacrifice: Virender Sehwag

Former Indian opener Virender Sehwag has shared the story of how Sourav Ganguly sacrificed his batting position in order to promote MS Dhoni, who made his debut in the year 2004 under Ganguly’s captaincy. Dhoni played a good number of games at the top of the order and ended up scoring plenty of runs, including his career best 183* against Sri Lanka and 148 against Pakistan.

Cricket expert and commentator Sehwag revealed this story in the T.V show “Cricket Ki Baat” and also added that Dhoni wouldn’t have become such a great player without Ganguly’s sacrifice. He also said that under the captaincy of Rahul Dravid, the finisher in Dhoni had evolved.

Ganguly promoted Dhoni at no.3

“We were experimenting with the batting order at that time. We decided that if we get a good opening partnership then Sourav Ganguly would come at No.3 but if we had a bad opening stand then we would send pinch hitters like Irfan Pathan or Dhoni to accelerate the scoring rate.

“Ganguly at that time decided to give Dhoni a chance at No.3 for three or four matches. There are a very few captains who would first give away his own batting spot for Virender Sehwag and then his set spot of No.3 for Dhoni. Had Dada (Ganguly) not done that, Dhoni would not have become such a great player. Ganguly always believed in giving chances to new players,” Sehwag told India TV.

Dhoni changed his approach: Sehwag

“During Rahul Dravid’s captaincy, Dhoni got the role of a finisher. He got out a couple of times playing a bad shot and he was also reprimanded by Dravid during one instance. But from that instance, he completely changed his approach and became a very good finisher. The kind of partnerships he had with Yuvraj Singh  are memorable,” Sehwag said.