Team India suffered a humiliating defeat in the final of the World Test Championship 2021–23 at the hands of Australia. The match took place at the Oval last month, and Australia became the champion by 209 runs.
It was the second successive defeat for India in the WTC final. Notably, earlier they lost the final of the last edition in 2021 against New Zealand at the Lord’s. The recent defeat shattered the dreams of the Indian team of winning an ICC tournament. Notably, it’s been almost a decade since India last won an ICC title.
The last time they did it was in 2013, when MS Dhoni led them to Champions Trophy success. However, after the WTC final defeat, former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar slammed the Indian team and also mentioned MS Dhoni while talking about the previous captains.
In an interaction at the Indian Express Idea Exchange, Gavaskar said that captains have secured jobs despite losing big matches or series. He also mentioned Dhoni’s name indirectly in his conversation.
The Indian legend said, “Whether you win or lose, the captain knows that he is going to be there. This has not been a recent case, mind you. This has been happening since 2011. There have been results where we have been wiped out in the series 0-4, 0-4 but the captain hasn’t changed.”
This could be an indirect question towards Dhoni, as he was the captain of the team when India were washed out on their tours of England and Australia in 2011/12. Though India won the 2011 ODI World Cup under Dhoni, the performance of the Test team during that session was miserable. India suffered back-to-back series sweeps against England and Australia.
Later, India lost a 1-2 test series against England at home as well in 2012. Despite that, Dhoni stayed as the test captain until 2014, when he himself decided to retire from Test cricket. It was Virat Kohli who replaced him as the test captain in the middle of the series. In 2022, Virat stepped down, and Rohit Sharma was appointed the new captain.
