Sourav Ganguly
Sourav Ganguly feels Dhoni's captaincy has not been up to scratch.Reuters

Team India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni has been left licking his wounds, after his side's 3-1 defeat in the Test series in England.

Dhoni has faced a barrage of criticism for his lacklustre performances as captain. Many former Indian players feel the 33-year-old should have been more imaginative as the skipper.

One of them is Sourav Ganguly, a former Indian captain and batting great, who reckons if Dhoni does not make the necessary changes in his style of captaincy, incredibly hard times lie ahead of him.

India are scheduled to tour Australia later in the year, where they lost 4-0 in the Test series in 2011-12.

"He will embark on another difficult tour of Australia in two months' time for a four-Test series. It is going to be even harder than it was in England and hopefully even he can find some time to regroup and reinvent to find a lot of things for India," NDTV Sports quoted Ganguly as saying.

Dhoni has lifted his game as a batsman while playing outside the subcontinent but as the skipper of the Indian team, he has to dig deep and find out where he can bring about the necessary improvements, according to Ganguly.

The former skipper stressed that Dhoni needs to work on his strategies a lot and should be more proactive than he is now.

"I think his tactics and his adaptability has fallen short. He needs to be a bit more inventive. He needs to take quick decisions if he wants to come back as a good captain in Test matches," Ganguly pointed out.

Ajit Wadekar, another former skipper under whom India won in West Indies and England in 1971, also reckoned Dhoni's tactics as captain were not up to scratch.

"He changed his technique and batted well. But why he did not change his tactics as captain foxes me. For example not keeping a third man where half the runs were scored. Also in team selection, Ashwin should have played from the first Test. Wonder why he did not," Hindustan Times quoted Wadekar.

Gundappa Viswanath, a former India batting stalwart, pointed out that he was far from impressed with Dhoni's style of captaincy as he reckoned the Indian skipper expected something extraordinary to happen all the time.

"I'm not happy with his keeping and captaincy, he's got his own mind. He always keeps repeating that. He always expects a miracle. Miracles cannot happen all the time. It happens once in a blue moon," Viswanath said.