History was made when Sourav Ganguly led the Indian team for a full tour of Pakistan in 2004. This was 15 years after Kris Srikkanth captained the Indian team in Pakistan in 1989, which also marked the debut of Sachin Tendulkar and Waqar Younis.
India played three Tests and five ODIs against Pakistan and won both the series quite handsomely.
Now then India head coach, New Zealand’s John Wright has revealed that skipper Ganguly was very keen on taking MS Dhoni, who was yet to make his India debut, to Pakistan for the series. Unfortunately, Dhoni missed the bus by a small margin, and Parthiv Patel was chosen for the three-Test series, and Rahul Dravid kept the wickets in the five One-day Internationals.
"Dhoni nearly toured with us to Pakistan (in 2004). Sourav was very keen to have him in the squad. He was on the borderline, and it was one of those decisions that could have gone either way. As it turned out, we selected a successful Test team, and he didn't make it," Wright told IANS.
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"That was obvious when Dhoni had started to come into discussions at the national level. Sourav had very good things to say about him and always encouraged youngsters who came into the set-up. But you never know how things would have worked out (for Dhoni had he been picked for the Pakistan tour). That's when I first started to hear about him," recalled Wright, who had a five-year stint (2000-2005) as the first foreign coach of India.
India went on to beat Pakistan 2-1 in the three-Test series and won the five-ODI series 3-2.
Wright paid rich tribute to MS Dhoni, who called time on his India career on August 15. He had made his debut for India later in 2004 against Bangladesh in an ODI.
"And Dhoni seemed to be reading the game an over ahead. That's always a sign of a good, strategic captaincy. "He's obviously one of India's greatest captains along with one or two in the Modern Era. He has certainly been fantastic for India. His record speaks for itself,” Wright said.
"It was obvious that Dhoni was not only a very gifted cricketer but also an extremely intelligent one. He was a very good listener who didn't say much in his first series (under me), but was observing and learning all the time. I thought at the time that he had a big future in front of him,” Wright said while recalling his association with Dhoni.
Wright was impressed by Dhoni’s ability to change gears while batting and adapt to different situations of a game. He saw a glimpse of that when Dhoni smashed his maiden ODI hundred against Pakistan in 2005 in Vizag.
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"He got a hundred in his career's fifth One-day International (in Visakhapatnam) while Virender Sehwag looked quite slow. That was a brilliant inning. It was one of those hundreds for which you would stand and say: 'This guy is very special',” Wright said.
"And in the fourth ODI, came in after openers Sachin Tendulkar and Sehwag had put on a good stand and he came in at No.3. The most interesting thing was that he was quite happy just to rotate the strike and give the batsman who was in, and I thought that it was really intelligent and smart cricket. And that was one of his characteristics not only as a cricketer but as a leader, particularly in one-day cricket, throughout his career. Technically he was very sound," Wright signed off.
(IANS inputs)
