I was asked once about the most difficult job in cricket. The question was like a subset of a larger set of skills that together constituted the action that transpired on the field. Surely, batsmen in the 1930s and 1940s playing on uncovered wickets, tackling deliveries that could go anywhere off a length, with no helmets or protective gears would have been tough. Some would easily classify it as the toughest.
Others would point out to the close-in fielders, who, even to this date, risk their bodies to get a chance to snap the opposition’s mainstay, or maybe put their bodies behind the bulleting ‘red thing’ emanating out of the batsmen’s arsenal like gunfire. Maybe that is the toughest job in cricket, albeit severely underrated.
Amidst the contest between the bat and the ball, the Holdings and the Chappells, the McGraths and the Tendulkars, some of the most underrated yet extremely pivotal men on the field are lost, and are remembered only when the main men, the ones with the cherry or the willow, turn to them in the anticipation of a culmination to the ongoing action.
This is where the question asked of me was answered by the person who asked it. Perhaps the most ordinary creed of men who played the gentleman’s game, who perhaps existed just for the sake of it, just because the team couldn’t afford to waste another fielder in their position, and those who took up the trade and made it their own, quietly, without a fuss, be it on or off the field-- the wicketkeepers.
Wicketkeepers: The underrated creed
If you select a random keeper and ask about how they took up the trade, you’d most often find either their desperation to get into the team, or the needs of the team itself. Jim Parks, a former England wicketkeeper, who kept for the Three Lions back in the 1930s and 40s said in an interview that he’d become a keeper by accident. While playing for his county team, the regular wicketkeeper was injured, and the captain had asked him to don the gloves.
Most keepers that we’ve witnessed have been makeshifts rather than the ones who were born to keep. No one’s born to keep in cricket. Compared to the plethora of batsmen and bowlers that teams boast of, there are keepers you can count on your fingertips.
There have been only Rodney Marsh, Ian Healy, Adam Gilchrist and Brad Haddin. There have been only Godfrey Evans, Alan Knott, Alec Stewart, and Matt Prior. There has only been Mark Boucher, only Adam Parore and Brendon McCullum, only Romesh Kaluwitharana and Kumar Sangakkara, only Wasim Bari, Moin Khan and Kamran Akmal.
Likewise, there have only been Syed Kirmani, Kiran More, and Nayan Mongia. And, there has only been MS Dhoni.
MS Dhoni: One of a kind
India’s nostalgia and rhetoric over their cricketers are perhaps the greatest flaws deeply ingrained within arguably the most passionate cricket fans in the world. Indians do not like change, do not want to give way to it, and anyone who tries to do the contrary is looked down upon with contempt and disgust.
The stature of the cricketer or the person in question and his contribution to the team stand nullified if the change presented in front of them doesn’t agree with their preconceived notions. Hence, when Dhoni expressed his desire to bat up the order, the fan jury passed the verdict that he should go.
When Dhoni failed to finish matches in the final overs, when his ‘bait-you-till-the-last-over’ heroics didn’t work, the fan jury wanted him to go. The same jury wanted him to go when he couldn’t win India the World Cup semi-final, as if he was destined to do so.
But the jury has been all but silent when the most intrinsic skill for which the man was picked in 2004-- the skill that has left batsmen bemused, more for the fact that the bails were off rather than the fact that they had missed the ball-- has only ripened with age. MS Dhoni, the wicketkeeper, over the years, has emerged as the wicketkeeper that India needed, but perhaps the one who grew so much in stature that the world forgot that he was a wicketkeeper too.
Of all Indian wicketkeepers, across all formats, Dhoni has the most number of dismissals-- 294 in Tests (256 catches, 38 stumpings) and 346 in ODIs (257 catches and 89 stumpings)-- and has played the most number of games. To add to it, he has 60 dismissals in T20I (39 catches and 21stumpings) which is the joint highest by any wicketkeeper, tied with Kamran Akmal.
Dhoni donned the gloves during an era when India were struggling to find wicketkeepers, who could keep well at first, and could contribute at least something with the bat lower down the order. After Nayan Mongia, who was India’s mainstay in terms of wicketkeeping during a major part of the 1990s, departed from the scenes, India tried out 5 keepers within a span of 3 years.
Vijay Dahiya, Samir Dighe, Deep Dasgupta, Ajay Ratra, and Parthiv Patel were men who did the glovework from 2000-2004, but without much success. A 21-year-old Dhoni, who later admitted that he too took up wicketkeeping to make it into his regional side, emerged on the scenes in 2004, as a hard-hitting batsman who could slog even the good balls out of the park, through his sheer power and muscle.
With time and circumstances, Dhoni climbed up the ladder of success with breakthrough performances during his maiden tour of Pakistan in 2006, and the advent of T20 cricket and his batting style suiting the requirements of the newest format, the selectors played the gamble of making him the captain of the Indian side for the inaugural ICC World T20, in 2007.
Dhoni the captain and the finisher overshadowed Dhoni the keeper
Dhoni repaid their belief in him by leading India to their maiden World T20 victory, and that, in essence, laid the foundation of the best gambler to have captained a cricket team. The rest, as they, is history.
However, during all these years, through success and failure alike, the crowing jewel of the man who has crowned his team with every title that there has been on the offering, has been the skill for which he was initially chosen.
Dhoni, historically, had never been a classical batsman. He was a mauler, who had an impeccable hand-eye coordination and perhaps the best bottom hand in world cricket. Captaincy was bestowed upon him, and with his instinct, something that he trusted more than any other cricketing theory, he led the Indian side to glories unheard of in the past.
But, both these things, while impeccable in their own ways, essentially took the sheen away from what he had been doing for years behind the stumps. Quick hands, lightening fast feet, and absolute accuracy when it came to stumpings have defined Dhoni’s style of wicketkeeping.
The last ball run out against Bangladesh in the ICC World T20 2016, the stumping of Sabbir Rahman in the same game-- wherein he waited for the batsman to lose his balance and lift his feet up and dislodged the bails within a fraction of a second-- as well as the deflecting wide throws coming at him onto the stumps, have been few of the hallmarks of Dhoni’s wicketkeeping.
Dhoni has taken more catches in ODIs (254 from 267 games) than all of his predecessors after Nayan Mongia combined (236 from 224 games).
In Tests too, he is miles ahead, as, since Mongia and before the arrival of Dhoni the Indian keepers took 144 catches from 65 Tests (2.21 catches per Test) as compared to Dhoni’s 256 catches from 90 Tests. (2.84 catches per Test)
He’s got the most stumpings in ODIs (86) for India and is tied with Syed Kirmani (38) when it comes to Test matches.
The perfect foil for the bowlers
Dhoni, as a keeper, has become a deterrent for the batsmen, and has prevented many of them from using their feet against the Indian spinners, which also the reason why India’s spin bowlers have been able to knit a web around the crease and trap the opposition’s batsmen in it.
Because of the hawk that stands behind the stumps, the likes of Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel, who do not turn the ball much have successfully been able to bowl straight wicket-to-wicket balls, as batsmen have been skeptical in using their feet.
Add to that the turn extracted by Ravichandran Ashwin, and by Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh in the past, and you would know that many of their wickets with sharp turning balls had to be attributed to Dhoni, who stood behind the stumps and latched up almost everything that came his way.
He has stood up to medium pacers like Irfan Pathan, Bhuvaneshwar Kumar, and at times to Zaheer Khan, thereby creating doubts in the batsmen’s minds, and has not erred either while making up for bad lines as well as for quick edges.
Dhoni has the 4th highest number of dismissals in ODIs amongst all wicketkeepers, only behind Kumar Sangakkara, Adam Gilchrist, and Mark Boucher. He is on the 5th position in Tests only behind Boucher, Gilchrist, Ian Healy and Rod Marsh.
Dhoni’s legacy, when it comes to batting and captaincy, might be up for debates, but his wicketkeeping would always remain sublime. It’s about time that we realize the fact that Dhoni is a keeper India never had, and would most certainly take a lot of time to find again, and start crediting him for the skill that he truly, and unquestionably, revolutionized.
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