The captain: Dhoni has led India to unprecedented heights but his time will soon come to an end. Photo: AFP
Dhoni belongs to the rare breed of men that are born leaders and under him, the men in blue reached new heights. The World T20, the number one spot in Tests for nearly 18 months, the World Cup and the Champions Trophy; India won all there was to win, achieved all there was to achieve. And calmly behind it all, wearing either the keeper’s gloves or the batsman’s, stood Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
It was not only the team that excelled under Dhoni but also the man himself. His ODI average for India before he was handed the captaincy was 42.65; since then it has been 56.71. A man of few words on the field, Dhoni often leads by example, and his charges – young and experienced alike – respond.
This excellence with the bat as captain means Dhoni’s average of 52.29 is the third-best of any player from all Test-playing nations in ODI history, behind Hashim Amla and Michael Bevan, and the highest of any player with 8,000 runs or more.
The 33-year-old – calm and collected as he is when all fail around him – is a man of crisis and the numbers show. He has scored only three centuries in a losing cause; twice his bowlers failed to defend totals in excess of 300, and the other time he came out onto the middle with India 29-5 against Pakistan, making an unbeaten 113 to single-handedly take his side to 227 but ultimately to no avail.
Many a time, he has dragged India from the jaws of defeat and more often than not, he contributes in their wins. Often it is the simple case of ‘if Dhoni doesn’t perform, neither do India’. In the 139 matches he has won, he averages 73.96. In the matches he has lost, 96 of them, he averages 33.88. Less than half and a difference of more than 40 runs; rarely do these figures reflect such dichotomy.
He has seldom shone in World Cup matches and before the 2011 final, his average in 11 matches stood at 22.4, having failed to get past the 30s in all of them. But in typical Dhoni fashion, he delivered in the final. 91 runs off 79 balls later, he was lifting the trophy; to forever etch his name in the game’s history.
But on his shoulder Dhoni carries the biggest burden there is in international cricket; the fickle love of one billion cricket-obsessed fans. With one unconventional helicopter-shot, he can send them all into jubilant frenzy, and with one wrong decision, he can earn their ire in equal measure.
It is burden that Dhoni — grounded, modest and passionate about the game — appears to carry with surprising ease. And that in itself has attracted criticism. He stands calmly, way too calmly for the fans, as his bowlers are dispatched all over the ground. He stands and watches behind the stumps, often betraying no emotion, as the game slips away from India. The fact that he can do little about it is often not good enough. They demand a reaction, any reaction, no matter how trivial or futile; often it is not forthcoming. They want him to share their frustration. They want him to scream and shout in anguish and anger; instead he stands still with a blank stare on his face.
But the burden of it all has visibly taken its toll. Slowly but surely, Dhoni has lost the exuberance and vitality he possessed in his early days. Gone are the long, slick black locks that made him an instant darling in India. In their stead is a crisp, military-style crew cut — grey and unassuming. Mahendra has aged past his time, such is the nature of his job.
Hence his time draws to a close quicker than any cricket fan would have liked. He will never again don the whites of Tests, and while the blue remains, it will surely not last till the time the next World Cup comes around.
And so Dhoni, the most unromantic of captains, will have to say goodbye to ODI cricket’s most romantic of tournaments.
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