Team India has been blessed with some of the great captains the world has ever seen. From Kapil Dev to Sunil Gavaskar and from Sourav Ganguly to Mahendra Singh Dhoni, all these skippers had followed their own unique leadership styles and guided the national sides to many glories.
Currently, Indian skipper Virat Kohli is doing magnificent things to take the team in the right direction in all the three formats of the game.
Former captains Ganguly, Dhoni and current skipper Kohli have all done excellent job while leading the Indian team and have been considered as the best captains the country has ever seen.
Let us take a look at how these three skippers impacted the growth of cricket in India:
Sourav Ganguly
Following the resignation of legendary cricketer Sachin Tendulkar in 2009, Sourav Ganguly was appointed as the captain of the Indian men's cricket team.Ganguly went on to become one the most successful captains of India in the longest format of the game till date, guiding the side to 21 out of 49 Test matches win. 15 of those Test matches that Ganguly led ended in a draw. He was also the most successful Indian Test captain overseas with a total of 11 victories.
Ganguly had also led India to 146 matches in the One-Day International (ODI) format, leading the Men in Blue to 76 wins and 65 defeats.
The current president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had faced the challenge of leading the then youngsters Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Mohammad Kaif. Ganguly led India to the finals of the 2003 World Cup, only to slump to defeat at the hands of Australia.
India were ranked eighth in the ICC Test rankings when Ganguly became the captain, and under his tenure, the team surged up to the second spot.
MS Dhoni
Wicketkeeper-batsman Mahendra Singh Dhani was handed over the capataincy in 2007 during his early days of international career. He had a challenge of leading the likes of experienced players namely Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh, Yuvraj Singh, Rahul Dravid among others.
However, Dhoni did justice to his role as he guided India to World Twenty20 Cup in 2007.
Later, the wicketkeeper-batsman also guided Team India to World Cup victory in 2011 after the team's 28-year-long wait for the title and Champions Trophy final in 2003.Dhoni remains the only captain to win all the major ICC trophies namely 50-over World Cup, T20 World Cup, and Champions Trophy.
Under his captaincy, Dhoni had led India in a total of 199 matches in the 50-over format, guiding the side to 110 wins and 74 defeats.
The wicketkeeper-batsman had also led India in 60 Test matches and helped the team clinch 27 wins.
Besides this, Dhoni also holds a decent captaincy record in the Twenty20I format. He had guided India to 41 victories out of the 72 matches the country played under his leadership.
Under MS Dhoni, India remained at the top of the Test ranking for 18 months. He also became the third skipper to have won 100 matches after Australia's Ricky Ponting and Allan Border.
Virat Kohli
Virat Kohli made his Test captaincy debut when Dhoni sat out of the first Test against Australia in Adelaide in 2014 due to an injury. The current Indian skipper smashed 115-run knock in the first-innings, which was followed by 141 runs in second-innings. Kohli went to become the fourth Indian to score a century on his Test captaincy debut.
Dhoni stepped down as the captain of India in the limited-overs cricket in January 2017, thus handing the role to Kohli across all three formats of the game. The Indian skipper went on to guide the national side to a Champions Trophy final in 2017 and a World Cup semifinal in 2019.
Under Kohli, India became the World No.1 Test team in the ICC rankings in October 2016 till April 2020 before Australia took over the top spot from them in the latest rankings. Notably, it is under Kohli's leadership that India became the No. 1 side in both Tests and ODIs at a same time for the first time ever.
Under Kohli's leadership, India have appeared in 52 One-Day Internationals and won 39 of them. Kohli has also led Team India to 37 matches in the longest format of the game and 17 matches in Twenty20Is, guiding the side to 37 and 17 wins, resoectively.
In 2019, the 31-year-old became the first captain ever to guide the Indian team to its maiden Test series triumph Down Under.
Though then Men in Blue had enjoyed great success around the world under the leadership of Kohli, they also missed out on two major titles i.e the ICC Champions Trophy 2017 and the World Cup 2019.
However, Kohli will definitely look to add many more glories to India's account in the coming future.
