Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the charismatic cricket captain of India

New Delhi: One of cricket's most charismatic personalities today is the Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni. He has been a true inspirational figure and has provided for some great cricketing moments. Mahendra Singh Dhoni was born in Ranchi, the capital of the eastern state of Jharkhand in India. At that time, Ranchi was just a small town well known for its natural resources and lakes. His father Pan Singh was a pump operator and his mother Devaki Devi was a housewife. Along with the other children; son Narendra and daughter Jayanti, the Dhonis were a simple hardworking family. Mahendra Singh Dhoni had an almost accidental start to his cricket journey. His teachers recall that Dhoni was an average student in class. But was a complete sports addict. The moment there was free time in the class, Dhoni would be the first one to run to the grounds. He first started playing soccer and badminton. Dhoni's school teacher K. R. Banerjee was friends with the coach of the Commando Cricket Club. Banerjee once got a request from the club to help them fill the wicket-keepers slot in their team. Dhoni had been playing soccer under his guidance for a couple of years. He had seen the flexibility and agility of Dhoni and thought that this was a good time for him to move from soccer to cricket. He also felt that cricket would give him the adequate exposure and opportunity to make a career in sport. He therefore suggested Dhoni to try his hand at wicket-keeping. The tournaments that Dhoni played in those days were 15 overs a side. He wasn't getting enough opportunities to bat at 7 in those matches. Thats when he moved on to play for Central Coalfields Limited or the CCL. Dhoni was also selected to play for the Bihar U-19 team in 1998. He played very well helping his team reach the finals of the Cooch Behar tropy. In the final he played an excellent knock of 84 helping his team reach a score of 357. But the opposition team Punjab also had an outstanding player in their ranks. Yuvraj Singh scored a mammoth 358 alone and his team amassed a total of 839 and went on to win the match. But Dhoni had made his mark. He was selected to play for Bihar in the Ranji Trophy and representing India was just one step away. Dhoni took up a job in Indian Railways to support his family. He was a ticket collector at the Kharagpur railway station from 2001 to 2003. His colleagues remember him as a very honest, straight-forward employee of the Indian Railways. After successful first class seasons in 2003 and 2004, Dhoni was picked to play for the India-A team on a tour of Zimbabwe and Kenya. He excelled on this tour both as a wicket-keeper and as a batsman. These performances caught the attention of the selectors and also the then Indian captain Sourav Ganguly. Dhoni was then picked to play for India for a series against Bangladesh and thus started his international cricket career. In only his 5th one day international, he played a swashbuckling innings of 148 against Pakistan and announced his arrival on the international scene. Few matches later, he scored an unbeaten 183 against Sri Lanka, the highest score by any wicket-keeper in ODIs. Within no time, he was India's first choice wicket-keeper in both Tests and ODIs. The year 2007 started off on a very bad not for Indian cricket. India were knocked out of the ICC World cup in the West Indies in the very first round. This prompted the seniors Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly to opt out of the 20-20 World cup in South Africa. In their absense, Dhoni was named the captain of the Indian team going to the 20-20 World Cup. Dhoni worked his magic and along with some awesome performances of other players in the team, brought the twenty20 World Cup to India. Under Dhoni's captaincy India became the first team after a gap of more than 20 years to whitewash Australia in a Test series. Dhoni also led the Indian team to the number one position in ICC rankings in Test cricket for the first time. Under his captaincy, India won the 2007 ICC World Twenty20, CB Series of 2007–08, the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in 2008 and 2010 against Australia 2–0, Asia cup 2010 and 2011 World Cup. His Test, ODI record is best among all the Indian captains to date. He also captained Chennai Super Kings to victory in the recent 2011 IPL and in the Champions League. He was named as the captain of ICC World Test and ICC ODI teams for 2009. In the final of the 2011 Cricket World Cup, he hit 91 not out of just 79 balls to lead India to victory. For his outstanding batting in the final, he was awarded as the man of the match. Dhoni has also been the recipient of many awards including the ICC ODI Player of the Year award in 2008 and 2009 (the first Indian player to achieve this feat), the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award and the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honour in 2009. In 2009 Dhoni topped the list of world's top 10 earning cricketers compiled by Forbes and he has been ranked as 31st richest sportsman in the world according to the Forbes Highest Paid Athletes for the year 2012. Dhoni's total earnings are estimated to be USD 26.5 million according to Forbes. Thus he has became the richest Indian sportsman surpassing Sachin Tendulkar. The TIME magazine added him in its "Time 100" list of 100 most influential people of 2011. SportsPro has rated MS Dhoni as the 16th most remarkable athlete in the world. He has continued to excel since then and is currently the captain of the Indian team in all forms of cricket.