‘We have a chabuk new batsman’: Sourav Ganguly’s first impression of MS Dhoni on 2004 Bangladesh tour

Sourav Ganguly had described MS Dhoni as a ‘Chabuk batsman’ in India’s tour to Bangladesh in 2004 which was the wicket-keeper’s first international tour after a really successful tri-series representing India A against Pakistan A and Kenya A, revealed former KKR team director Joy Bhattacharya.

That former India captain and current BCCI president Sourav Ganguly is a great judge of talent needs no proof. Ganguly’s backing of young talents like Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan gave India match-winners for the future. Ganguly saw the same amount of talent in MS Dhoni too. The former India opener knew Dhoni would go on to become a star when the wicket-keeper batsman first came into the Indian side in 2004.

MS Dhoni (Twitter)

Former Kolkata Knight Riders Team Director Joy Bhattacharya revealed Ganguly had described Dhoni as a ‘Chabuk batsman’ in India’s tour to Bangladesh in 2004 which was the wicket-keeper’s first international tour after a really successful tri-series representing India A against Pakistan A and Kenya A.

“I remember being on a flight to Bangladesh in 2004 and Sourav was just telling me ‘we have this chabuk new batsman’. ‘Chabuk’ means whipped. He said ‘chabuk new batsman’ who has come out. You have to see him, MS Dhoni is going to be a star,’” said Bhattacharya in 22 yarns podcast of Oaktree Sports hosted by Gaurav Kapur uploaded on Spotify and Youtube.

“One thing he was just fantastic at was that he would just see you and he would know the talent. If you have the talent, he would back you. It didn’t mean that you could not get runs, you could fail, it didn’t matter to him. Because he knew on the day you had the ability to score,” Bhattacharya went on to add.

Dhoni’s debut series in Bangladesh under Ganguly’s captaincy, was, however, not an impressive one. He was run out for a duck after facing just 1 ball in the first ODI at Chattogram. His scores in the next two ODIs were 12 off11 and 7* off 2 balls.

Dhoni’s career graph took an upward surge when he was promoted to bat at No.3 in an ODI against Pakistan in Visakhapatnam by Ganguly. The Ranchi cricketer hit 148 and since then has never looked back.

Dhoni has represented India in 90 Test, 348 ODIs, and 98 T20Is, scoring 4876, 10773, and 1617 runs respectively.

Under his captaincy, India went on to win the 2007 T20 World Cup, 2011 ODI World Cup, and the 2013 Champions Trophy.

Bhattacharya then went to further explain Ganguly’s eye for young talent by giving examples of Sehwag, Yuvraj and how he motivated Sehwag, a middle-order batsman, to open the innings for India.

“Look at Yuvraj, look at Sehwag. You know what he does to Sehwag. He turns around and says to him ‘look the middle order is too crowded. If you want to play for India, you have to open. There is me, Tendulkar, Laxman, Dravid... where are you going to get a chance? Yuvraj Singh did not get a chance for so many years because the middle order is crowded. Go and open’. And what happened was that Sehwag opened and the history was made,” Bhattacharya added.