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Performance, not insignia, is Dhoni's badge of honour

Dhoni's on-the-field record performance is a badge of honour in itself.

Billion-odd fans of Indian cricket and M.S. Dhoni are all charged up and feel betrayed that their second favourite cricketing son (Sachin Tendulkar, of course, remains the all-time favourite) was disallowed to wear his heart on his sleeve - or, rather, an insignia on his wicket-keeping gloves. The International Cricket Council (ICC), the global governing body of cricket, has thrown the rulebook at the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), India's governing body of cricket, asking the latter to carefully read through its 'Clothing and Equipment' section that specifically disallows any such adventure - or at least mandates that prior ICC approvals be sought.
After the images went viral and once it was pointed out that Dhoni sporting the 'Balidaan Badge' on his gloves without ICC approvals wasn't in the right spirit of the game, the BCCI - the sport that it is - promptly sought ICC's approvals for the same. The ICC, however, didn't play ball with the world's richest cricketing board and has asked that Dhoni keep wickets without the regimental dagger insignia of the Indian Para Special Forces helping him do the job. This seems to have enraged and infuriated a cricket-mad nation with fans taking a 'gloves are off' approach to what they see as ICC's high-handedness.
A section of his very vocal fans has claimed on social media that it is Dhoni's right to wear what he wishes to on the field, and that there is nothing wrong in his gesture to honour the armed forces with a badge that he has earned (Dhoni is the second cricketer to become an honorary lieutenant colonel of India's territorial army, the first being the other World Cup-winning skipper, Kapil Dev). In keeping with the times, the fans even egged him on with a hashtag #DhoniKeepTheGlove while there are those that may have even crossed the boundary line by spinning this as an
#ICCVersusIndia issue - on social media. In reality, though, better sense prevailed and the BCCI seems to have decided to handle the matter with kid gloves for once - on the eve of the match, despite being hand-in-glove with Dhoni on the issue, the BCCI was yet to contest the ICC's directive on the glove affair.
To be fair, it is not the first or the last controversy courted by the ICC Cricket World Cup. Be it the rain rule that ruined South Africa's chances in the 1992 semis, the Kolkata spectator anarchy that led to Sri Lanka being handed over the semi-final match against India (1996), the Hansie Cronje-Bob Woolmer earpiece controversy in 1999, the ban on positively tested Shane Warne in 2003, Andrew Flintoff getting dumped for being drunk in 2007, Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer's mysterious death in a hotel room in 2007, or Virat Kohli's misdirected abuses at an Indian journalist that turned out to be a case of mistaken identity (2015), the ODI game's final frontier has seen more than its fair share of turbulence.
But cricket was and still is a gentleman's game, and sport - any sport - is nothing if not played by the rules. Dhoni's on-the-field record performance is a badge of honour in itself. He's India's only skipper to have won the ICC World Cup in both the T20 and ODI formats, has scored more than 17,000 runs in international cricket (21,000 including IPL), has 820 dismissals (catches and stumpings) to his name, has run opposition batsmen out by his sheer wicket-keeping wizardry infinite times, and has helped India snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat on countless occasions with his captain cool attitude. The insignia may not be an insignificant issue for his fans, but the cricketing field is no place to drop the gloves.