Mahendra Singh Dhoni is the current captain and wicket keeper of the Indian Cricket team. He also has been the captain of the Chennai Super Kings, the franchisee from Chennai, in Indian Premier League team that won 2 consecutive matches in 2010 and 2011. Dhoni is fondly known as Mahi. With his commendable captaincy, he led team India to win the prestigious World Cup for the second time in 2011 after Kapil Dev; Dhoni scored 91 not out of just 79 balls. He also helped Indian win the Twenty20 World Cup in 2007. Under his captaincy Indian became the number one position in ICC rankings in Test cricket for the first time. Dhoni is the highest ranked one day international batsman on the ICC Rankings List. This explosive talent, rising from Ranchi, in Indian state of Jharkhand is one of the top-ranking batsmen of the world. The TIME magazine has included him in its Time 100 list of 100 most influential people of 2011.

Early Life of Mahendra Singh Dhoni
Mahendra Singh Dhoni was born on July 7, 1981 in Ranchi District in a Rajput family to Pan Singh and Devaki Devi. He studied at DAV Jawahar Vidya Mandir in Ranchi. Initially Dhoni played badminton and football and got selected at district and club level in these sports. He has also served as a goalkeeper for his football team. He was sent by his football coach to play cricket for a local cricket club. Dhoni had impressed everyone with his wicket-keeping skills and became the regular wicketkeeper at the Commando cricket club between the years 1995-1998. Based on this performance he was picked by Vinoo Mankad for Under-16 Championship. He emphasised on cricket after 10th standard.

Personal Life of Mahendra Singh Dhoni
Dhoni got married to Sakshi Rawat on 4th July 2010, who was his schoolmate from DAV School. Before their marriage, Sakshi was studying Hotel Management and worked as a trainee in Taj Bengal, Kolkata.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the gifted player has given India many precious contributions, be it in batting, in fielding or in captaincy.

Career of Mahendra Singh Dhoni
Mahendra Singh Dhoni had played for Bihar under-19 squad and scored 176 runs. His contribution to the tournament was 488 runs. He had made his debut for Bihar in the 1999-2000 seasons as an 18 year old where he scored a half century. He had scored just 5 fifty in each season in four Ranji Trophy matches. He was part of the East Zone squad that won the Deodhar Trophy for the year. Dhoni was picked in the One Day International squad for the Bangladesh tour in the year 2004. He did not have a great start to his one day international career. He was picked for the Pakistan ODI series. In the second match of the series, he scored, scored 148 in Visakhapatnam. Dhoni did get an opportunity to bat in the first two matches of the Sri Lankan series. He had ended the game with an unbeaten 183 off 145 balls, winning the game for India. Mahendra Singh Dhoni finished the series with the highest run aggregate. He overtook Ricky Ponting as number one in the ICC ODI rankings for batsmen in the year 2006.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni was nominated as the vice-captain for the series against South Africa in Ireland and the subsequent India-England ODI series. He was also elected as captain of Indian Twenty-20 Cricket Team. In September 2007 he equalled Adam Gilchrist`s international record for the most dismissals in an innings in ODI. He topped the ICC ODI batsman rankings for several months continuously in 2009. In 2009 he scored 1198 runs in just 24 innings at an astonishing average of 70.4.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni as Captain
Mahendra Singh Dhoni captained Team India for Twenty20 squad for the inaugural ICC World Twenty20 held in South Africa in September 2007. Indian team was the champions as Dhoni had led the team to victory against Pakistan. He went on to become the ODI captain of the Indian team against Australia in 2007. He made his debut as full-time Test captain of India against Australia at Nagpur in November 2008. India eventually won that. It was under his captaincy that India climbed to number one position in the ICC Test Rankings in December 2009. In 2011 team Indian won the World Cup for the second time against Sri Lanka. In the final match Dhoni scored an unbeaten 91 runs striking the final six that led to the glorious win. He won the Man of the Match award in the final match of the World Cup. He also remained the captain of the Chennai Super Kings that won two consecutive IPL matches in 2010 and 2011.

Test Career of Mahendra Singh Dhoni
Mahendra Singh Dhoni replaced Dinesh Karthik in December 2005 as the Indian Test wicket-keeper. Mahendra Singh Dhoni scored 30 runs in his debut test match. Dhoni scored his maiden century in the second Test at Faisalabad. Dhoni was the top scorer in India`s first innings against England in the 3rd test at Wankhede Stadium. With this achievement India soared up to the number one position in Test cricket for the first time in history. India had scored 726 runs in the 3rd match of this series, which has been highest test total ever.

Cricket Statistics of Mahendra Singh Dhoni
Batting and Fielding Averages

	Mat	Inns	NO	Runs	HS	Ave	BF	SR	100	50	4s	6s	Ct	St
Tests	67	106	12	3509	148	37.32	5852	59.96	5	24	378	61	192	28
ODIs	206	184	53	6773	183*	51.70	7680	88.19	7	45	517	137	193	65
T20Is	31	29	10	549	48*	28.89	499	110.02	0	0	30	17	13	5
First-class	108	172	15	5671	148	36.12			8	38			300	47
List A	263	237	64	8776	183*	50.72			13	56			263	80
Twenty20	124	111	36	2591	73*	34.54	1998	129.67	0	10	189	91	54	30

Bowling Averages

	Mat	Inns	Balls	Runs	Wkts	BBI	BBM	Ave	Econ	SR	4w	5w	10
Tests	67	5	78	58	0	-	-	-	4.46	-	0	0	0
ODIs	206	1	12	14	1	1/14	1/14	14.00	7.00	12.00	0	0	0
T20Is	31	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
First-class	108		108	78	0	-	-	-	4.33	-	0	0	0
List A	263		39	36	2	1/14	1/14	18.00	5.53	19.5	0	0	0
Twenty20	124	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

Honours Received by Mahendra Singh Dhoni
Mahendra Singh Dhoni was conferred with an Honorary Doctorate Degree by De Montfort University, Leicester, England, in August 2011. The Territorial Army in India bestowed the honorary rank of Lieutenant Colonel to Dhoni on 1st November 2011. He is the second Indian cricket player after Kapil Dev to have received this honour.