‘In the dressing room, he ripped the team to shreds’: R Sridhar narrates the incident when captain cool MS Dhoni misplaced his mood

Nicknamed captain cool for staying calm and composed beneath troublesome conditions, there have been only a few moments when MS Dhoni hasn’t lived as much as his title on subject.

However, former India fielding coach R Sridhar narrated an incident from 2014 when the previous India captain ended up livid regardless of India successful on the actual night.

“Getting back to my early days with the Indian team… following MS’ inputs, we began to get out fielding house in order with the World Cup in mind. We were playing West Indies at the Feroz Shah Kotla in October 2014 – a match we won comfortably but where we were absolutely shoddy on the field. MS was furious at what he perceived to be lack of effort and dipping fitness standards,” Sridhar, who grew to become the fielding coach in 2014, wrote in his ebook ‘Coaching Beyond’.

India had come into the match having misplaced the first ODI and have been trailing 0-1 within the sequence. Dhoni scored an unbeaten 51 off 40 balls within the second match to information India to 263/7. The West Indies practically chased down the entire cruising at 170/2 at one stage earlier than imploding to lose eight wickets for 45 runs and getting bowled out for 215.

Sridhar remembers that Dhoni mentioned after the match, “I feel quite a few things are missing. We have to pull our socks up. We have not played to our potential. This game is a crucial eye opener for us. We are on the winning side, but we could have lost this.”

“In the dressing room, he ripped the team to shreds and gave them an ultimatum, making it clear that if they didn’t meet certain standards in fielding and fitness, they would not make the World Cup cut, no matter what name they answer to. That showed me the kind of fielding culture he was looking to establish in white-ball cricket,” he added.