Is Dhoni as good as he is made out to be? To be fair to him, he has optimised on his potential to improve his keeping against pace bowlers and in his stumping (beginning as a very ordinary keeper who came in essentially as a batsman-keeper helped no doubt by the failures of others) He has excellent temperament and has shown good captaincy skills on many occasions, the youngsters in the team take to him well.

Then, what is the complaint about? Dhoni is street smart and knows exactly how the system works. In this instant age when the benchmarks for adulations are driven more by media-hype and assumed charisma rather than intrinsic worth, he has grabbed what has been thrown to him on a platter.

How many catches has he caught of a spinner? The smart guy that he is, he doesn't even attempt them so that the stigma of dropping a catch will not rub him. There are countless occasions when he has let go half-chances which could have turned the matches our way.

He is lucky that he has teammates who are decent enough not to publicly air their anguish.

He is now being compared to the fab-four which must be the most ridiculous cricketing judgement ever made. Do we see any quality strokes behind square from him? Apart from a jabbed off-drive, do we see any strokes on the off-side?

Coming to his man-management, he let Ganguly espouse his cause and promptly had him & Dravid out of the team (smart man that he is, he will not dare to do that with Sachin as there would be media backlash). There have been countless occasions when he let Dravid only to be backed by him and we have a situation where an iconic player is dropped after two failures.

Coming to his captaincy, he has abundant potential. But, if one were to closely watch, there are disturbing trends. In matches, where we have tough but possible chance of winning, it is predictable to see Dhoni scoring a half-century and the team losing. The smart man that he is, he knows that people will look at his batting average rather than the fact that no attempt was made to win the match. He knows very well that public memory is short.

The smart man that he is, he will be aware that criticism will follow in equal proportion once he starts losing. Therefore, it eminent sense to make the most in the commercially driven sport.

Just like the dot-com companies which flourished and vanished with equal gusto.