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A reputation staked on bold decisions, Dhoni makes one more
- Updated: January 5, 2017
There is a great little story, almost confirmed, but better off without a final confirmation, about India’s – perhaps the world’s – best limited-overs captain. In the 2007 World T20 final, when MS Dhoni asked Joginder Sharma to bowl the final over ahead of Harbhajan Singh, he told this domestic workhorse something. It was either at the start of the over, when Pakistan needed 13 to win, or after the six by Misbah-Ul-Haq, which left them needing six runs off four balls.
In the high-pressure final, against the great rivals Pakistan, having given up a winning position in a match India originally had no business winning, amid blaring music, this man, in his first tournament as an international captain, told Joginder, two years younger to him: “You have bowled so many overs in domestic cricket with so much dedication, when no one is watching. Don’t worry, cricket won’t let you down now.”
Like with many things Dhoni, it can’t be said with certainty if he believes in concepts such as larger fairness or destiny. It is also not a Dhoni-like thing to say. He, after all, sought to take all emotion out of his cricket. At the same time Dhoni is not an unemotional person; he just shies from expressing them.
This was too grand a thing for Dhoni to say, but then again what explains his promoting himself in the 2011 World Cup final in a grand way? Whatever it was, it calmed Joginder down. Dhoni would continue doing that for a majority of the next nine years in limited-overs cricket. Calm India the cricket team down. Calm India down. To the followers of a cricket team that could lose from any situation, he showed they could do the opposite: win from any situation, through this calmness.
A quintessential Dhoni image will be his lips covered with those camouflage gloves after watching a fast bowler not bowl to his field and go for a boundary. The cricket field was not a place to get angry or emotional on. The team needed calculated decisions not desperate gambles. He only gambled when all else failed. He is too proud a cricketer to rely on chance.
It was in this calm that he told Hardik Pandya to take his time in the last over against Bangladesh in Bangalore last year because – and only Dhoni thought of such things at these times – you can’t be fined once the last over has …
