A man under fire

Nothing epitomizes the "what have you done for me lately" mentality of portions of the Indian media than the way the flavor of the year - MS Dhoni - has been attacked since the Indian team's early exit from the T20 World Cup.

Kunal Pradhan delves deeper into this rabid fixation of the media to find a "storyline" to pursue, and asks for some perspective.

His captaincy has been dissected, his mistakes magnified, his effigies burnt (it sounds like a pretty good job in India, making effigies — income guaranteed, even in times of recession). Not because we enjoy parading on the streets with banners and torches but because our national pride (which, 62 years after independence, rides on which side of a three-run result we finish on) has been hurt.

Here’s a quick dossier on how Dhoni wounded our dignity over the last 20 months:

• Became captain of a team no one wanted to lead

• Went to the T20 World Cup in South Africa with a group of no-hopers and returned with the trophy

• Led India to their first-ever one-day series win in Australia

• Beat Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka, twice

• Defeated Australia in a home Test series

• Crushed England at home

• Won the Test and one-day series in New Zealand

• Scored at an average of 60 in Tests and 57.81 in one-dayers as skipper

If there is a positive trend in those little factoids, it must be completely disregarded because a) we don’t live in the past, and b) he appeared in advertisements and made pots of money.