“Yeah, he has three ICC trophies under his name, but not even a single century outside Asia.” A true cricket enthusiast can decipher MS Dhoni being concealed in these remarks. MS Dhoni has not scored a single overseas ton in his 15-year career. Is that true? Well yes. But it’s high time people understood that the captain cool’s prowess abroad goes beyond a three-figure score in some foreign pitch.
It is confusing that after witnessing India’s matches all these years, people measure Dhoni’s prowess solely by the lack of an overseas ton. Let’s just check out the players who accumulated the most runs for India in foreign countries such as SA, NZ, England, Aus and WI. We can refer to the venues as SENAW.
Most runs for India in SENAW: Sachin Tendulkar: 5098, Virat Kohli: 5090, Rohit Sharma: 3978, Rahul Dravid: 3546, Shikhar Dhawan: 3512, MS Dhoni: 3483, Sourav Ganguly: 3304
Out of these seven batsmen, Dhoni is the only one who spent most of his career at position no. 5,6 and 7.
Among the batsmen who scored min. 400 runs in New Zealand soil, Dhoni boasts a mind-blowing average of 84 with six fifties under his belt. Virender Sehwag is the 2nd best with an average of 54. India’s tour of England in 2011 might be one of the former’s forgettable tours. But Thala’s contribution of 236 runs from 5 matches with 3 consecutive fifties is unarguably one of the stellar performances by an Indian batsman overseas. All those thrashings he gave to bowlers like Swann, Anderson and Broad gifted him the Man of the series. It was also his 2nd MoS award overseas.
Dhoni is also the oldest Indian to win a MoS award in ODI cricket. Our captain cool is many things. But is he a bad performer in overseas ODIs? Hell no. If anything, he has been one of the top contributors for India in ODI overseas. Thus, it is evident once again that the name Mahendra Singh Dhoni is bigger than a random century in overseas pitches and many other things.
