Two World Cup titles, No. 1 Test rankings, most number of wins under his belt but on the flip side, a spate of overseas Test losses, Mahendra Singh Dhoni's tenure at the helm of India's cricket captaincy was nothing short of a roller-coaster ride.
The 33-year-old cricketer from Ranchi, who gave small town boys a chance to dream big, today surprised the cricket world with his sudden announcement of immediate retirement from Test cricket, making way for Virat Kohli to don the mantle of captaincy.
It all started for him with the 2007 World T20, and that was followed by a dream run in ODIs and Tests too, as he presided over India's rise to the pinnacle of Test cricket from 2009-11.
Besides the triumph in the inaugural T20 World Championship, India also won the ODI World Cup in 2011 at home under his captaincy, breaking a 28-year-old jinx since the maiden triumph in 1983.
He, as well as the national team, went through on-field transition as well as off-field controversies surrounding the Indian Premier League 6 spot-fixing scandal that rocked Indian cricket.
If he had faced criticism over the controversies, Dhoni was also not spared when it came to his batting especially against top quality bowling on the fast and bouncy wickets away from home.
Overall Dhoni led India in 60 Tests, winning 27 of them and losing 18 with a success rate of 45.00. 14 matches had ended in draws. Under his captaincy, the team managed to win just six Tests on overseas while losing 15 and drawing nine.
In batting, he averaged 40.63 as captain, and totalled 3454 runs with a best of 224. He had hit five centuries as captain. The legendary Sunil Gavaskar had averaged 50.72 while leading the team.
