Bangar impressed with Dhoni’s mentorship

India interim coach Sanjay Bangar has praised captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni for his efforts in leading the younger players on the tour to Zimbabwe, saying the normally ice cool skipper made a big effort to mentor the rookies.

There were six uncapped players on the trip to Harare, with Dhoni having more international caps than the rest of the squad combined, and Bangar was pleased with the way Dhoni made the players feel included.

This off-field effort paid dividends, as they won the ODI series three-nil, and the T20 series two-one, with just the one glitch in the first T20 where Zimbabwe pipped them to the post.

Bangar said: "I definitely felt that he opened up quite a bit. He had a lot of interactions with the players. He made that effort to go out and mingle with them, he probably invited them for dinners and they [spent time] over Playstations together.

"He went out of the way to make them comfortable, shared his experience with the younger guys, probably emphasised on the value of how to handle pressure, under match situations what are the things that are required to be done. So I think those were enormous learnings.

"What he also did fantastically was he passed on the tradition of Indian cricket, because these younger lot are the future of Indian cricket, and the way he shared his experience was very, very similar to how the earlier generation used to pass on the knowledge and the experience and just make a younger player comfortable in the dressing room, so he made all that effort and it was great to see."

Dhoni is now able to take bit of a break, as he is not part of the Test team that will tour the West Indies next month, as he has retired from the format. Virat Kohli is now skipper of that side.

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