Mahendra Singh Dhoni's bildungsroman: Long-haired iconoclast to elder statesman in blink of an eye

MS Dhoni: The man who infused brains behind new-found aggression

Nearly 24 years ago, a 16-year-old kid with a squeaky voice arrived at a hostile place to face, in Wasim Akram, Imran Khan, Waqar Younis and Abdul Qadir, one of the most hostile bowling attacks to have ever been assembled in cricket history.

In a few years’ time, this 16-year old boy grew manifolds in stature and at the tender age of 23, he became the embodiment of a nation’s hope- a nation that had a population of nearly a billion. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar captured the imagination of millions of Indians and surpassed them.

For Indian cricket fans of the mid-90s till the early 2000s, Sachin Tendulkar could do virtually anything that could be done on the cricket field with a cricket bat. No, Sachin Tendulkar just had to do virtually everything that could be done on the cricket field with a cricket bat. The entire nation found achievement in his achievements, felt despair in his failures, clung on to all kinds of hope in his presence, and simply resigned themselves to their fates in his absence.

Sachin Tendulkar came from the Bombay school of cricket as it was referred to in those days. Even before playing a single international match, Sachin Tendulkar had earned quite a reputation for himself. With the world record partnership along with his childhood friend and later, India teammate Vinod Kambli, and a century each in his Ranji Trophy, Irani Trophy and Duleep Trophy debuts, Sachin Tendulkar was already a known figure, at least in Mumbai cricket circles.

He was expected to do wonders even at the age of 16. That it took him almost two years to play his first significant innings and the fact that he too started realizing his true genius only after having played nearly five years of international cricket is testimony to the rather ignored fact that he too, like all of us, is after all human.

But, Sachin Tendulkar was the biggest thing to have ever happened to Indian cricket. He made millions hope that India could be a super power in cricket, and more often than not, delivered on those hopes, thus providing immense pleasure to millions. He transformed the way Indian cricket was viewed and, more importantly, the way Indian cricket was played.

India became a mediocre side of the early 1990s to, at least in home conditions, the dominant side of the mid-1990s and early 2000s. Even in overseas conditions, but for the mediocrity of his team mates, Sachin Tendulkar would have transformed India’s fate.

After India embarked on a golden era in cricket, largely on the back of the presence of some of the finest cricketers to have ever graced the game in Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman and Anil Kumble to partner Sachin Tendulkar, the most natural and inevitable of phenomena-change struck Indian cricket.

Sourav Ganguly was the first to wane, followed by arguably India’s greatest match-winner in Tests, Anil Kumble, who was also the first to retire in November 2008, immediately followed by Sourav Ganguly. Although Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman continued for a few more years, their involvement gradually started diminishing, especially in the One-Day version of the game. VVS Laxman in fact played his last ODI in 2006.

Under such uncertain circumstances, a young, and relatively inexperienced man from a state that was never known to produce great cricketers was handed the reins of the Indian T20 and ODI sides.

Coming from Ranchi from the Indian state of Jharkhand, Mahendra Singh Dhoni was seen as the man to carry Indian cricket forward, at least in the shorter formats. Unlike Tendulkar, Dhoni was never seen as a great cricketer at any stage of his early career. In fact, his inclusion in the team came about more as a result of lack of better alternatives than his own exceptional performances.

In his early days as an Indian cricketer, the most defining aspect of Dhoni was his long locks that made the most definitive statement from among all of his attributes. But it was a statement nevertheless, and as Tendulkar had done 15 years earlier, Dhoni influenced the Indian cricket viewer.

Like Tendulkar, Dhoni changed the way Indian cricket was viewed. He represented a largely globalised, outspoken, fearless and aspirational society that was bubbling with energy and wanted an opportunity to show itself off.

Never before had the Indian cricket fan seen a cricketer who could compete with the international stars of football in terms of style and fashion. Never before had there been an Indian cricketer whose interests outside cricket lay in riding powerful bikes and flying planes.

In that sense, Dhoni was unique and much like Tendulkar, captured the imagination of the Indian fan. His batting was less talked about, his wicket-keeping was still less talked about. All that was talked about when it came to Dhoni, were his bikes and his hair. For a population that only had the Bollywood heroes to copy styles from, here was a cricketer who, with his carefree attitude and swagger presented himself as a more than decent alternative to ape from.

Early days of MS Dhoni in the international scene

It is easy to conclude that Dhoni is all about style and swagger and little else. But that would be unfair on him and also, a very incorrect conclusion to draw. Mahendra Singh Dhoni is essentially an extremely confident individual who has immense self-belief and the courage to face whatever comes his way.

In his first interview after getting selected for the Indian national team, the interviewer asked Dhoni how he felt on getting selected for the Indian team. His reply was characteristic of what everyone realized only later. “I expected to get the call much earlier” was the reply from Dhoni.

Travelling with the India-A team to Nairobi to play in a tri-nation tournament also involving Pakistan A and Kenya, Dhoni had scored 362 runs in 6 innings. And after a modest beginning to his ODI career, scoring just 19 runs in 3 matches against Bangladesh, Dhoni played his first significant innings in the second of the five-match ODI series against Pakistan.

Promoted to bat higher up the order at number 3, Dhoni scored 148 off 123 balls. Later that year, he scored a brutal 183* off just 145 balls against Sri Lanka in Jaipur and helped chase down a formidable target of 299. More than the scores, it was the manner in which these scores were achieved that caught people’s attention.

In spite of all this, it was really leading a young and inexperienced side to victory in the T20 championship in 2007 that catapulted Dhoni into limelight. While Yuvraj Singh’s feat of hitting 6 sixes in one Stuart Broad was worthy of remembering the tournament by, there was one other particularly defining moment in the tournament.

In the final against arch-rivals Pakistan, India were defending nine runs off the final over. Pakistan had lost nine wickets but they still had the impressive Misbah-ul-Haq at the crease and on-strike to face the first ball of the final over. Mahendra Singh Dhoni had one over each of Harbhajan Singh and Sreesanth left but instead he went to the rather unfancied Joginder Sharma. What happened next is a part of history and a piece of the Dhoni folklore.

But in doing something that absolutely nobody expected and almost everybody would have been skeptical of if told about beforehand, Dhoni showed that he was prepared to go with his instincts even if it goes against conventional wisdom. The easiest thing to say would be that Dhoni got lucky with that decision. The more intelligent assessment of the decision would be that it was actually backed by some logic that Dhoni saw, but few others did.

Harbhajan Singh had been hit for a couple of sixes in his previous over. Sreesanth was erratic more often than not and handing him the last over was flirting with danger. Joginder Sharma was slower through the air, and the batsman had to hit him that much harder to get the same result. Yes, this too was a dangerous choice, but that is where some people get differentiated from the rest. Had India lost the game, Dhoni would have been lambasted when he returned home. But Dhoni was prepared for every consequence and believed in his wisdom.

Dhoni’s next big test was in the ODI tri-series in Australia also featuring Sri Lanka as the third team. Once again, Dhoni raised more than a few eye-brows when he decided to go with a young team leaving out the likes of Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid. Only Sachin Tendulkar was left in the team from among the ‘Fab 5′ of Indian cricket.

For the first time in more than a decade, India went into an overseas series without four of the Fab 5. Once again though, Dhoni was proved right. India not only reached the finals of the tri-series, but also beat Australia in the best-of-three affair.

Dhoni’s first game as India’s Test captain came against South Africa in Kanpur in April 2008. Trailing 1-0 going into the third and final test match, India’s captain Anil Kumble had to sit out due to an injury. India won that match by eight wickets and leveled the series. While virtually everybody expected the Test captaincy too to eventually go to Dhoni, when it came, it came under surprising circumstances.

On the final day of the third Test match of the four-match series against Australia at home in October-November 2008, captain Anil Kumble ruptured the webbing of his bowling hand while attempting a return catch. The injury proved to be serious enough for Kumble to announce retirement from cricket with immediate effect. Dhoni was immediately appointed as India’s permanent Test captain.

In the final test of the series, Dhoni led India to an impressive victory and ensured a 2-0 series win. Incidentally, the other victory, in the second Test of the series also came under Dhoni’s captaincy.

In his first Test match as India’s permanent captain, Dhoni showed further signs of his smartness. Chasing India’s first innings total of 355, Australia got off to a quick start and were scoring at over five-runs-an-over at one point in their first innings.

In the first session of day-3, Dhoni set a predominantly off-side field for left-handers Simon Katich and Michael Hussey with just two fielders on the leg-side and instructed his bowlers to bowl over the wicket taking the ball across the batsmen with the angle, thus forcing the batsmen to either be patient for runs or take risks by playing across the line in search for quick runs. The ploy worked, initially in curbing the momentum that Australia had acquired by that point, and eventually in forcing the batsmen to make mistakes in search of runs. India won the match by 172 runs but once again what stood out was Dhoni’s out of the box thinking.

During the final stages of the match, Dhoni handed over the captaincy to Sourav Ganguly who was playing in his last Test match for India. He even called up Anil Kumble, who was the original captain for the series, to collect the Border-Gavaskar trophy from the two legends themselves. In doing so, Dhoni showed that it was not just on the field that he was different, even off the cricket field, he had a few more ideas than others.

There was one thing more still left for Dhoni to achieve that year. By beating England in the second Test at Chennai, and thus winning the 2-match series 1-0, Dhoni led India to the No.1 spot in the ICC world Test rankings.

Dhoni’s next big moment came in the 2011 World Cup held in the sub-continent. India went into the tournament as one of the favorites and beat the likes of Australia and Pakistan on their way to the finals against Sri Lanka.

Just as he did in the inaugural T20 World Cup final, Dhoni raised a few eye-brows when he decided to leave out one of India’s most consistent and reliable bowlers in Ravichandran Ashwin. That Ashwin was left out in favor of Sreesanth was an even bigger surprise. But this was not the only thing that left everybody looking around for explanations.

India were asked to chase 275 to win the match and lift the World Cup. After losing Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar early, Gautam Gambhir and Virat Kohli steadied the ship for India. But when Virat Kohli fell, caught by Dilshan off his own bowling, Yuvraj Singh, who had had a dream of a tournament up until that point with runs with the bat and wickets with the ball, turning matches when they seemed out of reach, was expected to come out and see the match through along with Gautam Gambhir, who was playing a nearly flawless innings.

Instead, to everyone’s surprise, MS Dhoni walked out into the middle. Even choosing not to go by Dhoni’s lofty standards, Dhoni had had a mediocre tournament with the bat. And to bat in a final, chasing a formidable total, against a more-than-decent bowling attack, is always a challenge. But Dhoni has never been one to run away from challenges.

MS Dhnoi: The elder statesman of Indian cricket

In typical Dhoni fashion, he stroked his way to a dominating 91 and finished the game off with a trademark ‘helicopter shot’ for six over the bowler’s head. Most people would have sent the man in form to try and finish the game off and hope that they won’t have much to do if anything at all. Not Dhoni. He thrives in pressure situations.

In fact, like an adventurist who enjoys it more as the conditions get more taxing, he seems to enjoy it when the situations demand an almost super-human effort. And as if winning the World Cup was something that he is used to doing as often as riding a bike, he just stayed in the background of all the celebrations leaving all others to have their moment.

In the English summer of 2011, Dhoni faced his first real test as captain. Playing against a strong England side in their home conditions, Dhoni would have wanted each and every member of his squad to be fit and in perfect condition for the series.

But, on the first morning of the first Test, India’s premier pace bowler Zaheer Khan pulled his hamstring and had to be sent home. In the second Test, India’s other premier bowler Harbhajan Singh got injured and was ruled out of the rest of the series. The third Test had more agony in store as Yuvraj Singh got injured and Gautam Gambhir suffered a head injury while attempting a catch running backwards.

India lost all the four matches and Dhoni suffered his first dose of criticism. This was followed by another 4-0 whitewash, this time at the hands of Australia. Again, Dhoni’s captaincy came under severe criticism and calls for Dhoni to be removed as India’s Test captain started emerging from certain corners. Dhoni responded by taking the responsibility of the defeats upon himself and urged his team to look forward.

Amidst all this what struck most was that a man who prefers to remain in the background when the team wins, was ready to face all sorts of questions when the team went through a rough patch. These were signs of a true leader.

In the One-Day tri-series that followed the four Tests against Australia, India lost out to Sri Lanka for a place in the finals on the head-to-head rule. But, in one of the round robin games against Sri Lanka, India were required to chase down a target of 320 in 40 overs to get ahead of their opponents on net run rate and have a shot at a place in the finals. Previous Indian teams would have pointed at the fact that India also required Australia to beat Sri Lanka for a place in the finals and would have given this game up without even putting up a fight. But the Indian team under Dhoni was different. They took the challenge and, aided by a majestic 133* by Virat Kohli, got to the target well before the specified number of overs were bowled.

Under Dhoni, India could face any challenge and, more often than not, come out triumphant. Much of it can be credited to Dhoni himself. He handles all kinds of pressure quite admirably and face up to all kinds of challenges quite courageously. That then is no surprise when the team that he leads shows similar tendencies. Dhoni changed the way Indian cricket was played.

A year later, in the early part of 2013, India returned the favour to Australia as for the first time in their history, India won four Test matches in a single series.

Dhoni set the tone for the series with a scintillating double hundred in India’s first innings in the first Test at Chennai. The match was heading towards a tame draw when Dhoni decided to intervene. He scored 224 off 265 balls to take India to a total of 570. The rate at which India scored the runs ensured that the game had a result, and India’s spinners ensured that the result was in India’s favor. After two 4-0 defeats and then losing a Test series at home to England, a draw in the first match would have suited Dhoni quite well. But he would not have been satisfied with a draw. He wanted to win.

While India’s Test team was going through a rough patch, the ODI team was firmly established as the no. 1 team in the world. And it was with this status that India entered the ICC Champions Trophy of 2013 held in England.

But there were some question marks on some aspects of Indian cricket raised by the spot-fixing revelations during the IPL. The pride and honour of Indian cricket were at stake. Dhoni and his team had a point to prove.

Dhoni with the biggest scalp in limited-over format- 2011 World Cup

India won every match they played on the tour, including the warm-up games. India not just won all their matches on the tour, they demolished nearly every opponent. Australia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, South Africa, West Indies- every team seemed much inferior against the Indian team.

And although the final against England was a shortened version, Dhoni still had enough time to show his street smartness. Ishant Sharma had had a forgettable day with the ball. England needed 24 of the last three overs. Dhoni had one over of Bhuwaneshwar Kumar and two overs of Umesh Yadav along with an over each of Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin.

Dhoni chose Ishant Sharma ahead of all other alternatives. The rest is history as Ishant picked up Eoin Morgan and Ravi Bopara in the same over. Dhoni again stood vindicated.

Once again there was a gesture with human touch in handing over the trophy to the tournament’s best batsman Shikhar Dhawan. Once again there was a display of the elderly statesman attitude in allowing the younger teammates to lead the celebrations while preferring to stay out of the celebrations.

One of the virtues that some of India’s previous captains possessed was their ability to present their points of view quite articulately. Rahul Dravid was easily one of India’s finest speakers. Anil Kumble’s words too were always highly measured and at the same time always made the point that was intended. Sourav Ganguly was much more aggressive but in no way could he be judged as a bad speaker.

These were people who the world would stand up to listen to when they spoke. Dhoni has proved to be no mug either in that department as well. His speeches are often very articulate and almost always quite rich in content. There is never any loose talk when Dhoni speaks.

Whatever he lacks in literary quality when compared to the likes of Dravid and Kumble, he makes up for it through his ability to say the right things at the right times. It is very difficult to recall a Dhoni statement where he has publicly singled out a player for poor performance. The only such incident that immediately springs to mind too was while captaining the Chennai Super Kings team in the IPL.

It is even more difficult to recall a Dhoni statement where he has singled out a player for good performance. He always makes sure that every victory is always credited to the team. There is always a sense of control when Dhoni speaks. To put it simply, his speeches, too, are characterized by the qualities that characterizes his batting- simplicity and clarity of thought.

The 2013 edition of the IPL will not be remembered most for the unpleasant match-fixing revelations that came out during the tournament. Indian cricket, like 12 years earlier, was under the scanner and needed somebody to stand up for it.

Twelve years ago, it was Sourav Ganguly. This time it was Mahendra Singh Dhoni. In the press conference just before leaving for the Champions Trophy, Dhoni was repeatedly posed questions on the state of match-fixing and its indulgence in Indian cricket. Dhoni thwarted all those questions. In his first press conference on reaching England, Dhoni was again posed the same questions, this time by the English journalists. Dhoni’s response: “If I have not answered Indian journalists, there is no reason why I should answer you. I will speak at the right time.”

After India won the final against England, Dhoni was asked about the improvement in India’s fielding standards as to whether it was just a group of brilliant athletes coming at the same time or a change in the culture. Dhoni was again very articulate with his reply. While admitting that it was due to a cultural change he ensured that nobody could point a finger at previous teams. He contrasted the quality of infrastructure available to young and upcoming players to that available to players a few years ago.

Again, while he made his point, he ensured that nothing could be seen as wrong with the past or nothing was special with the present. Much as he does while leading the team out in the park, he ensures that the pride of Indian cricket remains intact.

Whatever Mahendra Singh Dhoni does, he seems to have a purpose behind it. Whatever he says, he seems to have a lot of sense in it. Most importantly, and against popular opinion, whatever he does, he seems to have a lot of logic-backed thought behind it.

In his early days, it was his hairstyle and his love for bikes that influenced cricket viewers. In his present form, MS Dhoni the captain, MS Dhoni the player and most of all MS Dhoni the man, continues to influence people.

Sourav Ganguly divided opinions, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble and VVS Laxman were little known outside the cricket field. Dhoni, on the other hand, creates a consensus, and at the same time, has the personality to carry people with him. In that sense, since Sachin Tendulkar, Mahendra Singh Dhoni is the biggest thing that has happened to Indian cricket. He may not be the ‘God’ that Sachin Tendulkar went on to become for Indian cricket. But he certainly is ‘The Man’ that Indian cricket needs in these times.