By FARFRAZ AHMAD WATTOO
It was an evening of 16th June 2010 when I saw MS Dhoni coming in to
bat against Bangladesh in a group match of Asia Cup 2010.
Only ten years old I was watching a match from home with full excitement. I had heard that Indian captain MS Dhoni is a superstar who always finds a way to get India over the line. Bangladesh had scored just 167 in an ODI game so the job was easy for Dhoni who scored a quick 38 of 45 balls and got a comprehensive victory over Bangladesh.
It was the final of the grand World Cup 2011 against Sri Lanka when Yuvraj Singh had a wonderful tournament but MS decided to come before him at no.5 and as always he delivered and even finished the game with a sky-high six of Kulasekara’s delivery. That was Dhoni’s game. It was his evening as he had done all the hard work by taking the responsibility to finish the game.
At the time of the celebrations, there was no MS Dhoni in the picture. He never wanted to frame himself. He made that evening the Tendulkar’s and Sehwag’s evening. This was what made him the best captain. Sacrifice and trust is the main element in the life of any successful captain and no doubt Dhoni was the best captain of modern-day cricket. Dhoni won the first-ever T20 world cup with a young Indian side.
I did not witness that game but whenever I think about the names of that squad, I always get surprised. There was no Sachin, no Dravid, no Zaheer Khan, no Ishant, no Laxman, and no Ashish Nehra. It was pretty young bowling and batting department which purely relied on RP, Irfan, Yuvraj, and Gambhir. Yes! Not MS Dhoni because they did not need Dhoni the
batsman. They needed Dhoni the leader, the captain. Dhoni showed a unique way of captaincy in that tournament.
Indian cricket team never needed dhoni the batsman, but they needed dhoni the captain
He knew unpredictability was the key to win such sort games. He kept changing bowlers and their ends and it never allowed the opposition to guess “who” with “what” was coming at them. In the 2011 world cup, India was not the favorite team to win as it did not have special and world-class bowlers.
Only Zaheer Khan showed his class but the impact of Dhoni’s personality was so much that he won the world cup with Zaheer, Nehra, Munaf Patel, and Harbhajan Singh. And guess who their 5th bowler was then? It was Yuvraj Singh who bowled a lot of batsmen out. Here, you may ask why Yuvraj couldn’t repeat his performance in the 2017 Champions Trophy? I guess the difference of captaincy and mindset of Virat and Dhoni may have become a reason.
Who knows? Successful people always build a team of great and successful individuals. These people know how to win games through the potential of players and what role or number will be helping one out to play with his full potential and capacity.
To make Rohit Sharma a top-order batsman and Virat Kohli another great leader is another achievement of MS Dhoni. He knew Rohit will do miracles at the opening slot so he offered the opening slot to him in the Champions Trophy of 2013 which he won with a fully balanced squad. He knew at the end of 2014 that due to a less effective bowling attack, he had faced a lot of overseas defeats in the longest format of the game so it was the time to hang his boots and offer the test captaincy to an emerging superstar Virat Kohli.
Ashish Nehra was 37 years old in the 2016 T20 world cup but Dhoni played the tournament with him. Nehra reveals that indeed it was MS Dhoni’s captaincy and not Hardik Pandya’s bowling which made it possible for them to beat Bangladesh in a nail-biting group match. In his 15 years’ career, we have seen a lot of roles and dimensions of MS Dhoni.
You will not see anyone playing Malinga at his peak the way MS did. He had a unique way of putting the opposition under pressure by running fast and taking singles and doubles. Cricket is just a game, it fascinates us and we enjoy our life in it but one must have a life after the game as well!
Yes Dhoni is a legend but at the same time, not irreplaceable as well. He was the greatest captain of modern-day cricket in limited-overs and will never be forgotten. Cricket lovers will always remember what he did on what occasion and in what shape. With his retirement, a great era of cricket comes to an end but his lovers can watch his struggle and untold story in the movie “MS Dhoni: An Untold Story” which features the late Sushant Singh Rajput as MS Dhoni. (Edited by Mamoona Shakoor)
Also read: Bangladesh refuses to play test in Pakistan due to Coronavirus
