An open letter to MSD from a die-hard fan.

Dear Mahi or Dhoni or whatever people fondly calls you,

      First of all I would like to congratulate you on your excellent performances today and in this whole tournament. If not you were there in the field and as a captain, India would've won the match and it could've been a great loss to our country of 1.1 Billion people. We're very grateful to you for not allowing that to happen. I guess, like me, Manmohan Ji and other corporate leaders are now busy preparing you a quick 'thank you note'. You saved this country man, perhaps you didn't realized it then. or did you!!??

         In today's match, when India was 90/1 at the end of 10th over, my friend said - now only Dhoni could restrict India below 200 and lose the game. But he has to play really well to do that. And you did exactly that with your 19 ball 23 and remaining not out, even when India required a 20 runs victory margin. Congratulations, not only for your performance, but also for helping Raina and others to score quickly with your wonderful tips. Now I am angry with my friend because he judged you better than me!. But I am proud of you for  rescuing all Indians from such a terrible loss. You helped our government and many companies in India and abroad from possible loss of man hours, insomnia, depression etc due to cricket fever of their employees and subjects. I can't even imagine the loss to our GDP and GNP and its reaction in our economy, if India reaches the semi finals. You once again saved our economy which is already shaking from our national festivals like bandhs and hartals. Thanks man, for avoiding it.

         Not only today, your overall performance in this tournament has been marvelous. I could never forget your run out in the match against WI when India needed 31 runs from 12 balls. That too to give strike to master batsman Harbhajan Singh. It was really awesome to see you delegate the responsibility of scoring the winning runs to non specialist batsmen. But what happened to your strategy of being not out and shouldering the responsibility in that match?? I think you were correcting your last match's mistakes today. Your another great knock, a 8 ball 2 against Australia was also mind blowing. No other T20 captain can imitate you in that. I always wonder how a player can perform this much consistently. In the last T20 world cup also you showed Player of the Series performances. It's unfortunate that they didn't select you, but with that you saved our economy from depression. Hope this time you'll get that award for sure. After all which player considers the economy of his country while playing cricket. You're the best! :)

     Talking about your captaincy, your overall strategy in this tournament has been exceptional. Your decisions like including R.Jadeja, A. Nehra and D. Karthik in many matches have been phenomenal. Not even a County team or an IPL captain will have the guts to include them in their playing eleven. But you proved your decisions are right with their superb performances. Your shuffling in the batting order, field placements, bowlers selection etc etc where beyond words of appreciation. Not to mention your pieces of advices on and off the field to young players like to Raina today to slow down the scoring rate. He was batting madly till you came to bat and you steadied his innings. That shows how good a captain you are.

          As a great fan of yours I really don't know how to thank you. This is my humble letter to appreciate you. I am making this letter open because, like me your all other fans could read this and add their comments as well. Hope you won't mind. Whatever the critics and ill talkers say, for me you are the best T20 captain in the world. I seriously wish you must be the captain till you retire from the game. For the record, no other captain lost all of his Super 8's matches in the last two years combined. Don't worry no one could beat you this year and next year we can increase the margin to 9 matches and 3 years.

Wishing you all the best,

Yours lovingly

dinnu :)