MS Dhoni Captaincy Record
India & IPL · 2007–2026
Career snapshot
Int’l Matches
178 winsIPL Matches
136 winsICC Titles
2007 T20 WC, 2011 WC, 2013 CTIPL Titles
2010, 2011, 2018, 2021, 2023Format-wise record
| Format | Span | Mat | Won | Lost | Tied | Draw | NR | Win% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Test | 2008-2014 | 60 | 27 | 18 | 0 | 15 | 0 | 57.50% |
| ODI | 2007-2018 | 200 | 110 | 74 | 5 | — | 11 | 59.52% |
| T20I | 2007-2016 | 72 | 41 | 28 | 1 | — | 2 | 59.29% |
| Overall (Int’l) | 2007-2018 | 332 | 178 | 120 | 6 | 15 | 13 | 59.09% |
| IPL (CSK / RPS) | 2008-2025 | 235 | 136 | 97 | 0 | — | 2 | 58.37% |
IPL captaincy records by team
| Team | Span | Mat | Won | Lost | Tied | NR | Win% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chennai Super Kings | 2008-2025 | 221 | 131 | 88 | 0 | 2 | 59.82% |
| Rising Pune Supergiant | 2016-2016 | 14 | 5 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 35.71% |
Notable Achievements
- ICC Titles3 — 2007 T20 World Cup, 2011 World Cup, 2013 Champions Trophy
- IPL Titles5 — 2010, 2011, 2018, 2021, 2023
- Champions League T20 Titles2 — 2010, 2014
- Most matches as captainMS Dhoni reserves the record of captaining India in most matches (332) across three formats and also winning most (178) games
India captaincy
Tests
Mahendra Singh Dhoni took over Test captaincy from Anil Kumble in November 2008 and led India in 60 matches: 27 wins, 18 losses, 15 draws, a 45% win rate, the lowest of his three formats. However, India reached the No. 1 Test ranking within a year of his taking charge and held it for close to two years, but the run leaned almost entirely on home form.
Away from India, the results never matched it, and back-to-back 4-0 losses in England and then Australia in 2011-12 cost India the top spot and remain the low point of his Test tenure. He retired from the format the way he retired from most things, without ceremony, walking away mid-series in December 2014.
ODIs and T20Is
Unlike Test cricket, white-ball cricket is where the Dhoni captaincy earns its reputation. He won 110 of 200 ODIs and 41 of 72 T20Is, both healthy win rates, and collected all three global white-ball titles available to a captain: the 2007 T20 World Cup in his first assignment in charge, the 2011 ODI World Cup that ended India’s 28-year wait for the trophy, and the 2013 Champions Trophy. No other Indian captain has won all three.
He was an accidental captain, but it changed the course of Indian cricket. In 2007, when seniors like Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid made way for the juniors to play the inaugural T20 World Cup in 2007, the BCCI had multiple candidates to choose from: Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Gautam Gambhir and MS Dhoni. They settled on Dhoni.
India went on to lift the T20 WC title, beating Pakistan in a tense final, and that popularised the T20 format in the country. Shortly after that, the Indian Premier League was launched, and in many ways, it was Dhoni who made it all happen.
What people remember from that stretch isn’t just the trophies, it’s the calm that came with them: bringing himself on to bowl the last over of a World Cup final, backing a death-overs bowler nobody else would trust, never looking rattled on camera regardless of the scoreboard. That composure earned him the nickname “Captain Cool”. He remains the greatest white-ball captain of India.
IPL captaincy
Chennai Super Kings and Rising Pune Supergiant
Dhoni has led Chennai Super Kings since the league’s first season in 2008, with one detour to Rising Pune Supergiant in 2016 and 2017 during CSK’s two-year suspension.
The RPS stint was the outlier in his captaincy record: 14 matches, five wins, nine losses, a 35.71% win rate, the only sustained stretch where his numbers looked ordinary.
Back at CSK, the story is different. Across 221 matches as their captain, he’s won 131, a 59.28% win rate, and led them to five titles: 2010, 2011, 2018, 2021 and 2023, plus two Champions League T20 crowns in 2010 and 2014. No franchise has come close to that consistency, and he’s tied with Rohit Sharma for the most IPL titles won by any captain.
The stand-in return, and after
The armband officially passed to Ruturaj Gaikwad ahead of the 2024 season, closing out one of the longest leadership stints franchise cricket has seen. It didn’t stay closed. Gaikwad was ruled out midway through IPL 2025 with an elbow injury, and Dhoni stepped back in as captain for nine matches, CSK winning three of them on the way to finishing bottom of the table, their worst season under him by some distance. He confirmed after that campaign that Gaikwad would return as full-time captain for 2026 and stayed coy about whether he’d keep playing at all.
He did keep playing, at least on the roster. IPL 2026 turned into the first season of his career where he didn’t take the field even once: CSK were eliminated from playoff contention before he got a chance to, ending an ever-present streak that had run since the tournament’s first edition in 2008. CSK finished with six wins from 14 games under Gaikwad, missing the playoffs for a second straight year.
Between international cricket and the IPL, Dhoni has captained more matches, won more games, and lifted more trophies than any other Indian cricketer, and the record closes on two very different notes: a white-ball international career with nothing left to prove, and an IPL captaincy that ended twice, once by his own choice and once by simply not being picked to bat.
