MS Dhoni: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Bye

Simple Game Over the years, Dhoni showed a brilliant knack of breaking down the game into little fragments and mastering each bit.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni was digging into a plate of noodles sitting on the stairs of the Eden Gardens lobby. He had just hit a double hundred in a P Sen Trophy match playing for Shyambazar Club against George Telegraph on a sweltering afternoon. Between lazy bites, he indulged in some informal conversation with a few reporters and some very enthusiastic Bengal under-17 cricketers. It was May, 2005, and he had already become a star with a swashbuckling 148 against Pakistan in Visakhapatnam a month back, his only significant knock in nine One-day-Internationals till then.

That day he hit 10 sixes and 20 fours in a 126-ball 207, opening the match with Wriddhiman Saha, who got 74. India had already got a taste of brute hitting, courtesy Virender Sehwag, but this was more ruthless, more relentless.

“Your first 200 in a 50-over match?”

“No I had scored one in school,” he said with a smile.

“How did you manage to keep the intensity in such hot and humid conditions?”

“The conditions were an issue. But the bowling was not good. Ultimately it’s a simple game. If I get balls which can be hit, I will. You are looking at the innings as a whole. For me it’s ball by ball,” the 23-year-old Dhoni had said. And with that, he distilled his entire philosophy of cricket in a few throwaway lines.

The “simple game”—over the years, Dhoni showed a brilliant knack of breaking things down to make matters simple. Even in the failed chase against New Zealand in the 2019 World Cup semi-final, he had broken down the chase into shorter spells, dividing the 240 runs needed into short targets, and keeping India’s hopes alive after the team had lost their top three with just five runs on the board.

MS Dhoni’s career timeline. (HT Photo)

“When you take the big score and break it into small targets and you keep achieving those targets, it gives you confidence,” Dhoni had explained after a successful chase in the 2015 World Cup match against Zimbabwe in Auckland. “Also a factor, who is bowling well, who is not and who can you target? It sounds really complicated, but more often than not when you are in those situations it’s the subconscious that is working.”

In that match, India had lost their top four for 92, chasing 288, when Dhoni and Suresh Raina stitched together an unbeaten 196-run stand for the fifth wicket to see India through. Dhoni was India’s Captain Cool, India’s master of chases. Over the last couple of years, Dhoni’s ability to force the pace of a match at will had gone, but his acumen remained intact. Every player in Team India has spoken of how he helped them from behind the wickets, or from across the 22 yards when batting. Ravindra Jadeja probably benefited the most from Dhoni standing behind the stumps, both in India colours and as CSK bowler.

Dhoni had some wonderful code words for his bowlers. When he wanted Jadeja or R Ashwin to bowl the doosra, he would say “Tarak Mehta daalta reh” (keep doing the Tarak Mehta), referring to the TV series Tarak Mehta Ka Oolta Chasma (Tarak Mehta’s Reverse Glasses).

Simple inputs for fielders would pour in from behind the stumps. Dhoni told Suresh Raina and Ambati Rayudu to follow the footwork of the batsmen and anticipate where they were going to hit when standing in catching positions, the stump microphone clearly picking up the instructions during India’s tour Down Under in 2014-15.

Dhoni-logic enhanced both his batting and keeping. From opting to use a heavier bat during the 2011 World Cup keeping in mind the slow and low nature of wickets on offer in the subcontinent, to shadowing with two bats before coming out in the middle during slog overs so wielding one bat feels lighter, Dhoni’s improvisations were his own.

If he brought all his intensity to the game, at training sessions he was the opposite, laughing, joking, playing football—he hardly ever did keeping drills like other wicket-keepers. Instead, he would spend time visualizing his batting and keeping skills. Raina has this to say about Dhoni during a talk show: “He plans overnight, then gets a feel of it in the morning and tries to visualise it.”

When playing Ranji Trophy for Bihar in 2000 as a 19-year-old, Dhoni’s keeping skills were raw but not out of the ordinary. As he began playing international cricket, he began to evolve. With television replays playing a part in all run out and stumping decisions, he cut out the follow through that keepers usually employ to absorb the force of a delivery or a throw. He was always aware, alert.

Aware of where the stumps were even when they were behind him. Alert to pounce on the slightest lapse by batsmen. He developed a technique where he would not even gather the ball—deflecting it onto the stumps instead—to gain a fraction of a second. With super slow motion cameras in place, that fraction often proved decisive.

It was a simple game for him; he had it broken down into tiny fragments, and mastered each fragment.