Former South Africa captain Faf du Plessis succeeded Virat Kohli as the captain of the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Royal Challengers Bangalore last season. Before that, du Plessis was with Chennai Super Kings (CSK) where he played under former India captain MS Dhoni. Du Plessis spent a fair amount of time with Dhoni at CSK and the former Proteas batter never shied away from accepting that he was overwhelmed by Dhoni’s genius at times.
Plessis has heaped praise on Dhoni for his amazing leadership skills time and again. And now when the RCB captain spoke at the team’s podcast, he once again reserved high praise for Dhoni. While talking about what he learnt from former IPL skippers during his stint as a player with different franchises, the South African said that he knew he can’t be exactly like any of them.
“I think what was really good for me to go through was, even with all of that, the conviction that I am not going to be Graeme Smith as a captain, I’m not going to be Stephen Fleming as a captain, I’m not going to be MS Dhoni as a captain. In order for me to be true to who I am as a person, I need to be me. Because if you’re not being you, then people will see through it, maybe not when you’re doing well but definitely when you are under pressure, or underperforming, the real you will reveal itself,” said Faf.
The RCB skipper then dived deep into what he learnt from Stephen Fleming as well as MS Dhoni.
“I got an opportunity to go to Chennai as a young-ish phase in my career. Stephen Fleming is one of the great leaders within the game, obviously, for New Zealand cricket also. The different aspect was him being a man manager, a guy who just works on relationships. And I go, Wow, that’s impressive,” said Faf.
“And then you put MS on top of that, and you go, wow, this guy’s tactically odd to read the game like this. And you go, Okay, he is impressive as a captain,” du Plessis said about Dhoni.