MS Dhoni is against dream team concept

New Delhi: Some former cricketers may have selected their best-ever Indian team recently, but captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni does not favour such a practice, saying "one should respect every individual who has played for the country".

"It`s very difficult to compare and compile all the players and teams of all era. Personally, I won`t select my best team ever because I feel we should respect everyone who has played for India," Dhoni said at a promotional event here. Two stalwarts of Indian cricket -- Kapil Dev and Sourav Ganguly -- recently picked their best-ever Indian ODI squads which had a few surprises. Suprsingly, while Kapil`s all-time best ODI squad did not have a single player from India`s 1983 World Cup-winning side, Ganguly`s dream ODI and Test teams reflected a post-Eighties selection. Ganguly ignored the spin troika of Bishan Singh Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna and B S Chandrasekhar in any squad. He named VVS Laxman as 12th man in Test squad while totally ignoring Mohammed Azharuddin. Unlike the 1983 World Cup-winning captain Kapil who did not include himself in his dream ODI team, Ganguly didn`t hesitate to name himself in both the ODI and Test teams he selected. In what can be seen as a ray of hope for out-of-favour seniors like Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh and others, Dhoni said that not age but form and fitness was crucial for the success of any cricketer. "I don`t think age is a factor. What matters is form and fitness and not age," he said. He was also of the view that all forms of the game are important. "They are all inter-related. Performance in one will have an impact on the other form," Dhoni said. Dhoni, undoutedly the most successful Indian captain of all-time, lauded his deputy Virat Kohli for his leadership qualities. "Kohli is a fantastic cricketer. He has great knowledge about the game and has done well as a captain. He has all the right recipes. He is very expressive on the field," said the wicket-keeper batsman under whose leadership India had won both the ICC Twenty20 World Cup and the ICC 50-over World Cup apart from this year`s Champions Trophy. PTI