Yuvraj Singh, one of India's best modern-age all-rounders, had a pretty terrific all-round career even though affected by injuries and illness. Yuvraj, who started his career under Sourav Ganguly, went on to play the majority of his career under MS Dhoni's captaincy that too in all three formats. While Yuvraj preferred Ganguly over Dhoni since he gave them the first opportunity to shine at the highest level, either wasn't his choice when it came to comparison with Ricky Ponting.
Yuvraj was asked about his favourite Indian captain on the Club Prairie Fire Podcast by Adam Gilchrist alongside Michael Vaughan. After talking about Ganguly and Dhoni, Yuvraj talked about Anil Kumble saying that the former India leg-spinner didn't run away from putting himself in tough situations and that was the quality of a great leader, something he always saw in Ricky Ponting.
"Kumble became the Test captain when we came to Australia. I thought Kumble was a guy whose attitude was to take the ball when the situation is tough, not give it to another guy or when the wickets are falling let me take the ball," Yuvraj said on the Podcast. "So I thought that kind of attitude was great in a leader. That's why I talk about Ricky [Ponting] had the mentality of a leader, of stepping in to bat when the situation is tough, whatever the situation is, he is ready to bat."
Kumble led India in 14 Test matches but the team won only three out of them before Dhoni was made the all-format captain across all three formats. "I think when the team went to Dhoni, we had a really good coach, Gary Kirsten, who actually made us believe that we can win the World Cup, be the number one Test side and Dhoni was a good captain as well."
"Sourav was more of being aggressive, trying to take teams head-on. What I liked about Dhoni was, he always had a plan B. Like if plan A doesn't work, go to plan B. So different captains," Yuvraj added.
"I got in the side when Sourav was the captain. He kind of gave us a lot of confidence and a lot of chances because we were younger, we were not consistent. Like myself and Sehwag and Bhajji [Harbhajan Singh] and Zaheer Khan. He kind of stick to us for a bit because he knew that these guys can be match-winners in the future," the World Cup 2011 player of the tournament said on the Ganguly-Dhoni comparison.
