Sometime soon after India won the 2007 T20 World Cup, a few panelists sat down to look back at what was quite an improbable feat. While they regaled and reminisced, Harsha Bhogle, as he often does, came up with a one-liner, “For Dhoni, winning is important but losing is not such a big deal,”.
Let’s be honest here. For Indians, there is a clear demarcation for what is acceptable and what is not as an outcome. Relationships must lead to marriages, ‘good’ students have to crack IIT-JEE, political debates cannot conclude in grey areas. And cricket? Well, let’s just say, 1996 World Cup semi-final at the Eden Gardens.
What happened in Kolkata that evening pretty much sums up how the ‘born in 90s’ cricket fans like me learnt to watch our cricket.
But then, the country had close to a billion people playing and watching the game religiously, sensing that here is something where we were still somewhat close to becoming the world leaders.
As we entered the Ganguly-era in the aughts, our ‘state of frustration’ gave way to ‘state of nerves’. A talented bunch led by an inspirational skipper would reach the finals and, more often than not, face a meltdown. Remember Zaheer Khan’s first over in the 2003 World Cup final?
A further couple of years down the line, Dhoni burst onto the scene. The 147 against Pakistan and the 183 against Sri Lanka are part of the folklore, but one series that stood out from that period was the away tour of Pakistan in 2006.
Not to say that India did not win tight matches before that, but often, they would mean exaltation — like Ganguly waving his shirt in the Lords’ balcony. With Dhoni at the helm of things, there was a certain sense of nonchalance about winning.
After he hit that six off Kulasekara to seal the 2011 World Cup, as Yuvraj screamed at the other end and the country went bonkers, Dhoni celebrated with a twirl of the bat and quietly got hold of a stump as a memento. Be it retiring from Test cricket or giving up captaincy in the shorter format, he played out what Bhogle had said, “not such a big deal”.
Dhoni’s calm demeanour and the style of keeping things simple does not come without its negatives. His approach has often been made responsible for his comparatively poor record as a captain in Test matches where he would let the game ‘drift away’ and not make things happen. In the last few years, with his power hitting skills waning, he has often found himself in situations where he left too much for far too late.
Will Dhoni retire at the end of this World Cup? However widely that might be anticipated, the fans and scribes have almost given up on penetrating the iron curtain called Dhoni’s mind. He would probably hit a last-ball six, pick up a stump and make the announcement at a press conference. Or he might mess up with a steep chase and then embarrass a journalist for asking him the retirement question. Whatever might be the scenario, he has made fans like us come to terms with equanimity, something both Kohli and the fans would miss if he indeed decides to call the curtains.
Probably, ICC itself summed it up best in a tweet, replying to Yoko Ono, “Imagine there’s no Dhoni, It’s so very hard to do”.
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