India's coach Gary Kirsten has likened the country's ODI captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni's ability to extract the most out of his players to that of late Hansie Cronje, under whom the former South African opener had played in international cricket.
Kirsten felt Anil Kumble, the Bangalore stalwart who leads India in Tests commanded great respect from his team, but the swashbuckling wicketkeeper-batsman from Ranchi was more charismatic as he could get the best out of his team.
"Anil Kumble commands great respect from his team. He is a performer of note and has done it for many, many years. He is a tremendous person and brings in his personal qualities to the job," Kirsten said.
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"Someone like Dhoni is more charismatic. He just backs himself and completely believes in his ability. He has got an unbelievable knack of getting the players under him to feel the same. He has the ability to get the best out of his players. That's a great quality, which I was fortunate to have under Hansie Cronje," Kirsten said.
Kirsten said that after his recent interaction with Sachin Tendulkar, against whom he had played a lot of cricket, he felt that the champion batsman was enjoying his game more than ever before and also perhaps eyeing a half-century of three-figure knocks in Test cricket (presently he has 39 to his credit).
"I asked him (Tendulkar) about the whole retirement thing. He is eyeing, may be, 50 Test 100s. It's a long way to go for him, 11 more to go. It could take him 11 Tests or 25-30 Tests to achieve that, who knows! But the important thing is that he is enjoying his game now, more than ever and wants to keep playing," the Indian coach said.
On his experience of working with the master batman, Kirsten said Tendulkar was an exceptional player still willing to learn and improve his game like any other champion of the sport.
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