INDIA Cricket Legends
MS Dhoni: a bona fide legend with shades of grey
He took on a ridiculous amount of work as a wicketkeeper-batsman and made it look easy, but as captain, his legacy is a little more complicatedThe first time I met MS Dhoni, he served me cashew nuts, almonds, biscuits and tea on a cold grey afternoon. Early 2006 it was, and Dhoni had hit Indian cricket like nothing had hit it ever before - with brute force and a style of expression that told you the owner of this style didn't know he needed to behave in a certain way. This interview was the first big story I had been assigned, and though it was just the beginning of my working life, it was part of an otherwise unsatisfactory job. I was in the job because within three months of the start of my career I had chosen a crazy-money offer over a satisfying job. Getting to travel to Ranchi to interview Dhoni was a break from the daily admonishments I used to give myself for my poor career choice. I was hopelessly out of my depth for the assignment. I didn't take a recorder with me, nor a working mobile phone. I just went to Dhoni's house at the given time, only he wasn't home. Now I had to go back because the police wouldn't allow me to wait outside the house. So when Dhoni did come, he didn't find me, nor did he have a way to get in touch with me. A couple of hours later, when I reached his house again, he was about to go away for some other appointment having waited for me. I told Dhoni what had happened, and he cancelled whatever he was stepping out for. He looked around, saw a big crowd and security cordon, and decided to take me to his refuge, his sister's place. Minutes later, he returned with a serving tray full of a whole tea spread. Unfortunately, because I was so unprofessional, I don't remember much of the interview well enough to reproduce it in writing except the one thing that clearly stood out: he had taken a big risk and gone to Delhi for a Railways cricket trial where they didn't even give him a proper hit. And just like that, he resigned that Railways job. Now a good job is what a majority of athletes from non-privileged homes in India played sport for. Whatever else they managed was a bonus; the job was something to be held on to. Dhoni told me he grew up in a house so small that he struggled to find a place for his kit bag. However, security of job meant naught when he felt he was treated unjustly. More importantly, he knows that he is too good a player to lick a bureaucrat's boots for getting a fair chance at cricket selection.
Dhoni broke down external influences on the Indian dressing room, making life easier for the juniors
The portrayal of Dhoni here is that of a man who dismantled external influences on the dressing room to let free the younger lot.
Speaking after the interview, Dhoni voiced his distrust of the media. He was at a loss to understand why the press hyped certain players when many others, who were better cricketers, did not get a mention. He didn't understand why he needed to do interviews with journalists who told him they were close to the India captain. He was talking about all this to the wrong guy because I didn't realize such things happened. Imagine being a young cricketer from a small town and being made to oblige journalists because they know the captain. Imagine how much this gets even worse for the same young cricketer: club owners, administrators, selectors, sponsors, agents, commentators, umpires, scorers, and employers' cousins. He feels that he can't afford to offend. It took me less than a couple of months to quit that job—with no backup in hand and my family far away in a town smaller than Ranchi. Now, getting any further into that is navel gazing, I'm sure, so I shall sheet that home very briefly. But when I first did get a handle on how cricket media worked, I did note that those journalists who had the ear of the captain did exercise a bit of influence. They had access to inside scoops, and younger players made sure they said hello whenever they went past. I never saw it in action, but I was told how journalists used to influence selections until recently. A word here or there from them could make or break a career. During the Ganguly-Chappell saga, they lobbied for their own man to ensure future access to gossip and stories, and interviews with young stars cricket being the last thing covered. I had serious doubts if I would survive: I didn't think even Dhoni, a youngster who had been so nice to me, remembered me now—not that I tried to remind him; imagine having to be in the good books of a captain just to be able to do my job. I didn't need to be. Young cricketers didn't need to be. As a couple of years went by, Dhoni was captaining India and not doing any of the things he was so against; his predecessors and coaches could only gasp at how unblemished that humility still was. The first decision Dhoni took as captain was a clearing of the dressing room of any external influence. Your utility to the Indian team was all that mattered now. As much as Dhoni's rise from so far out of the system had given boys like him a reason to dream, he made sure it was their cricket that mattered and how worldly wise they were. It had a small knock-on effect on us writers. There were no leaks, no exclusive interviews. We just focused on the cricket. But it was as much the best of times to be a young cricket journalist in India as it was to be a young cricketer. That sense of liberation comes in the form of Ravindra Jadeja, the Kumars Bhuvneshwar and Praveen, while in later days Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya. The ones who would have been outliers were not feeling out. This was the biggest off-field impact of Dhoni on Indian cricket. If he never did anything else for Indian cricket, he had done more than enough by opening it up to a much better talent pool. Sixty Tests as wicketkeeper-batsman and captain, 42 more than any other at the time of his Test retirement. Averages more than 40 and has a perfect wicketkeeping record, except in the final months when he stopped diving in front of first slip, probably because of a dodgy back. Good enough to bat at No. 6 on turning tracks to accommodate an extra bowler, good enough to be India's second-best batsman on a tour of South Africa and England apiece. Absolute game changer of a wicketkeeper in limited-overs cricket. A powerful hitter who turned his game around to become a middle-order rock: over 10,000 ODI runs at an average of over 50 and a strike rate near 90, he was like a mix of Kapil Dev and Rahul Dravid with a dash of Michael Bevan thrown in. And then 200 ODIs as captain, over 150 more than any other wicketkeeper. Dhoni was the biggest revolution in the art of wicketkeeping in his time: he stumped without any give, he stuck his leg out to stop late cuts, he deflected throws for direct hits, he stood upright with pads together to stop half-volleys. And Dhoni was part of three ICC tournament title wins, plus two other finals, three semi-finals, and India's ascent to No. 1 Test ranking. His keeping and batting played a big part in India's longest successful run in cricket. There was one massive blip in between when they lost 4-0 in both England and Australia, but Dhoni the wicketkeeper-batsman was always up for the challenge even if the captain needed some support from the board to survive. Over the seven years of his captaincy, Dhoni went up and down in his keeping stance 113,120 times. Under him, as Test captain, India spent over 120 overs in the field 36 times, six more than the second-worst team on that count, Sri Lanka. Overall he kept to close to 200,000 international deliveries. Add to it the IPL. By the end of it, the fingers were all beaten out of shape and the back a literal pain. All this needs to be said because in trying to figure out Dhoni the captain and Dhoni the man, we often forget the primary job he did: to score runs and keep wicket. He took on that ridiculous workload and did more than any other man before him had done. If he wasn't a captain, much more would have been written about his primary skills, he still would have been all-time great, and we wouldn't have spoken about his shades of grey. Captaincy was not something that Dhoni wanted for himself. Actually, when it came to his being made the captain for the ODIs, he refused to talk to the media despite requests from the board, and finally, he read a prepared statement. But once he took it on board, he dived head-on. He embraced the new T20 format—an important cog in speeding up the IPL revolution, which in turn opened doors to more expansive employment for cricketers in the country. However, he had a very unenviable task in the longer formats: that of captaining the real legends of Indian cricket. He was not intimidated. Fairly early in the day, he had made it clear — things would be run his way in the team. If Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid were surplus to requirements in ODIs, he dug in his heels but persisted with them in Tests where they continued to be useful.
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Manjrekar: Very unlikely we'll see someone with Dhoni's all-round package
Never did Dhoni drop them himself. If they were picked, he told the selectors he didn't want to sour the dressing room by leaving the legends out of the XI. He had great instinct for this. "An old soul," his former coach Greg Chappell called him. "He has been here before." Dhoni kept letting the selectors know that it was on them and the losses would be on them if they came, because India were too slow in the field. Fitness and 50 matches, at least, of experience going into a World Cup were non-negotiables. Eventually he had his way in time for the 2011 World Cup.Once N Srinivasan became the president of the Indian cricket board and his company bought Dhoni's services in the IPL, all that selection struggle ceased to exist. Just like captains before him, Dhoni loved being in absolute control. It was more comfortable once he had a young team to handle, the Jadejas and Ishant Sharmas, who would listen to him and bowl as he wanted. Off the field, where he had sought to eliminate all external influences, a number of players started to feel a need to be managed by the company that managed Dhoni. Not that this was something new; it was just more organized this time. A specific IPL team, a specific talent managing agency, started being in the limelight, controlling Indian cricket, but the captain just stayed mum on this poor optics issue, not saying or doing anything. It was beneath him to address these concerns. He was offended that such a successful and committed captain was not considered above all this. Dhoni, on the other hand, is inaccurately said to be a great risk-taker. Dhoni was not quite the risk-taker but a great assessor of risks. Because he had Joginder Sharma bowl the last over of the T20 World Cup final, because he takes games deep, because of his odd bowling choices at times. Sharma was a decision almost forced on him because the designated man, Harbhajan Singh, had had a horror 18th over and was perfect for Misbah-ul-Haq's slog-sweep. Dhoni sat on series leads so negatively he once had India bat until they set New Zealand 617 to win in a Test where rain was forecast on the final day. He refused to take a chase with seven wickets in hand in the West Indies.
