Does the choice of India’s new captain for the oneday series against Australia and Pakistan mean anything beyond cricket? Mahendra Singh Dhoni, in his mid-twenties, is to lead India now in these ODI series, instead of Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar or Sourav Ganguly, all in their mid-thirties. This seems to be a shift towards a new idea of what an ODI captain ought to be like: from wariness, dependability, proven success and popular demand towards cavalier energy and a bit of a risk, a wager with youthful unpredictability. This is how it ought to be for any traditional activity, not necessarily of the sporting kind, to be pulled out of the morass of its own long history and given a new shot of life and hope in the face of breathlessly changing times and tastes. From the nuanced longueurs of Test cricket to the increasingly manic foreshortening of time that came with ODIs and now Twenty20, the debate over exactly what kind of personality would be best for leading a national cricket team does not yet show signs of resolving itself once and for all. The main polarity of the debate remains that between youth and experience, and in cricket there seems to be a way out by choosing two different kinds of personality for the ODI and the Test teams. Mr Dhoni is leading India in the Twenty20 World Cup, and from that to the ODI captaincy is a natural leap. It remains to be seen though whether the choice of skipper for the subsequent Test series comes up with a very different sort of player — perhaps Mr Tendulkar.

The president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India has expressed the hope that Mr Dhoni would be capable of handling “new emerging trends”. To recognize and correctly respond to these trends, it is also important to bring to gestures like Mr Dravid’s withdrawal from captaincy the right kind of understanding. Messrs Dravid, Ganguly and Tendulkar all have different styles of quitting, refusing or eluding captaincy. To this gamut of styles may be added the enigma of Steve Waugh’s retirement from cricket at the peak of his success as batsman and captain — a triumph of good sense over ego. What Mr Dhoni’s captaincy might signal — though much remains to be seen in terms of how he plays it out and survives it — is a new way of building leadership and the ability to tackle the pressures of contemporary cricket through taking risks. It could carry the game beyond wariness and weariness.