West Indies ODI captain, Jason Holder, in an interview admired the captaincy of the Chennai Super Kings captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni saying that he has been learning a lot from Dhoni’s skills and composure in becoming a successful captain. The 23-year-old Barbadian was all praises for the CSK captain who has led the team into 6 finals out of the 8 seasons since the Indian Premier League’s inception in 2008.
“MS is an influential figure. In true sense, he is a leader and I found that during my stint with Chennai Super Kings in the Indian Premier League. As a captain, I have always looked upto MS’s leadership qualities for inspiration,” Holder said.
“The manner in which Dhoni handles pressure is exceptional. That is the reason he has achieved so much while leading a team with players from different countries. There is so much to learn from him.” Holder lauded Dhoni’s ability of staying calm in crunch situations and added that he would like to instill similar skills into himself.
Holder wasn’t a part of the recently concluded eight edition of IPL since he was on national duty. West Indies and England finished the 3-match Test series in a 1-1 draw and Holder played an exceptional role with both bat and ball. Although his role in the team is to pick wickets, looks like Holder has been working on his batting too. He brought up his maiden Test hundred during the series and is proving to become a very handy lower-order batsman.
Ever since the sacking of Dwayne Bravo in January, Holder has been given the mettle of captaining the West Indian ODI team. He led the team to the World Cup quarter-finals and his captaincy could only get better, one would hope. Certainly, with a leader like MS Dhoni as his inspiration, Holder can surely become the “thala” of the Caribbean!
