The Dhoni Touch

by Bharat Sundaresan

  BHARAT SUNDARESAN

  THE DHONI TOUCH

  Unravelling the Enigma That Is Mahendra Singh Dhoni

  Foreword by Ravi Shastri

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  A Note on the Author

  Foreword

  Introduction

  1. The Hair-raising Tale of Mahi

  2. The MECON Boy

  3. The Portrait of a Cricketer as a Young Boy

  4. Prime Time

  5. The Fauji Captain

  6. The Mahi Way

  7. A Captain Comes into His Own

  8. Pythagoras behind the Stumps

  9. Thala

  10. The Man Emerges

  Footnotes

  2. The MECON Boy

  3. The Portrait of a Cricketer as a Young Boy

  4. Prime Time

  7. A Captain Comes into His Own

  8. Pythagoras behind the Stumps

  9. Thala

  10. The Man Emerges

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  A Note on the Author

  Bharat Sundaresan lives for West Indian cricket and pro wrestling, and is a raconteur of all things and metal music. He has covered cricket for the Indian Express for the last ten years—seven of which he spent tracking down the Jamaican cricketer, Patrick Patterson.

  To my wife, Isha, for always letting me keep

  my hair longer than hers

  Foreword

  It’s a real pleasure to write this foreword for Bharat who I am sure will portray the best of the great man in his own casual and laid-back style of writing, which, I am sure, will make this book a fascinating read.

  My earliest memories of Mahendra Singh Dhoni are unflattering. It was late 2004. There had been talk of an exciting twenty-four-year-old from Ranchi who had been making waves in domestic cricket with his big-hitting, but there was little evidence of his prowess, especially when he made a quiet entry in his first few international games.

  The first three games were against Bangladesh, and I can distinctly remember the cluck-cluck in the commentary box when he was dismissed cheaply in the fourth too, this time against Pakistan, always the acid test for any Indian cricketer. Did he really belong at this level?

  There wasn’t much scope left for debate when Dhoni smashed 148 in the next game he played. Before the year was through, he had thrashed Sri Lanka for an unbeaten 183. A star was born.

  For a decade after that, I met Dhoni intermittently. He was player, then captain of India, and I spent most of my time, mic in hand, in the commentary box. Our paths crossed frequently, but given our different jobs, we did not have much time together.

  Nonetheless, I marvelled at his rapid growth, as a player, then as a pillar of the Indian team. His work ethic was excellent, as I gathered from those around the Indian team, but even more impressive was his unflappable temperament.

  ‘Captain Cool’ may sound clichéd now, but in many ways it was an apt description, for nothing could frazzle Dhoni. I’ve seen him remain steadfast and inscrutable like a monk in victory and defeat.

  With every passing game, my admiration for him only grew, particularly during my stints as the team director in 2014–16, and then as chief coach from mid-2017. Being in the same dressing room gave me greater insight into the player and the man, and in both aspects, he is top class.

  Dhoni is an unorthodox cricketer and an unconventional man. His technique, in front of and behind the stumps, is not easily replicable. My suggestion to youngsters is: don’t try it, unless it comes naturally. But this does not mean he doesn’t put in the hard yards to succeed. In fact, there are few who train and try harder.

  As an individual, he is fascinating. A man of few words, his ability to insulate himself from all the brouhaha that surrounds cricket in India—and this gets more cacophonic when a player is successful—is quite remarkable.

  He has a sharp street-smart brain and can cut through the clutter—whether on cricketing matters or otherwise—to reach a decision rapidly. Sometimes, the decision can be astounding, leaving people with dropped jaws.

  This happened when Dhoni quit Test cricket in the middle of the series against Australia in 2014–15. I had no inkling—nobody did—that this thought was even churning in his mind. When he announced his retirement, everybody was stupefied.

  I’ll be dishonest if I say I didn’t have my doubts he had done the right thing then (especially as a Test player, he could have carried on). But looking back, I think it was the correct decision. Also, brave and selfless. I can’t think of another player who would quit the scene having played ninety Tests. The temptation to reach the milestone of 100 would be impossible for most to resist, not to mention the power of captaincy. But Dhoni didn’t want to linger on in a format where he believed he wasn’t able to give it his all.

  Giving up Test cricket, I believe in hindsight, has helped him extend his career by quite a few years. Watching him in the IPL in 2018, I haven’t seen him look sharper, fitter and hungrier, which is a kick in the teeth for those who doubted whether he could last this long.

  More pertinent is his value in the dressing room. There are always doubts about how a senior player, and a hugely successful former captain at that, would fit in with all the youngsters and a new captain. This requires mature understanding of player and dressing room dynamics, and Dhoni has gelled superbly, being pillar, adviser, mentor, whatever the situation demands, without imposing his ego.

  I won’t labour on providing Dhoni’s career highlights. These are too many and too well known to bear repetition. All I’ll say is that in the fifteen years he’s been playing international cricket, Dhoni has compiled a body of work which marks him out as a legend. With a capital L.

  In fact, I’d use only capital letters to fortify the point. LEGEND.

  Mumbai

  June 2018

  Ravi Shastri

  Introduction

  ‘Woh dekho wahan Dhoni. Kuch cricket mein dhyaan nahi hai uska, style-baazi karta hai bas. (Look at Dhoni over there. He’s not focused on cricket. He’s a show pony.),’ says a young man about Indian cricket’s latest sensation. His companion pitches in: ‘Bike ka shaukeen hai. Bike, gaadi, ghadi, buss. (He loves bikes. He’s just about bikes, cars, watches.)’ It’s February 2005, and I’m at one end of the long, winding lobby at the Taj President (Vivanta now) in Mumbai, happily eavesdropping on these two cricketers talking about Mahendra Singh Dhoni to a bemused senior player. They’re in the city for the 2004–05 edition of the Challenger Trophy. Dhoni, who made his international debut only two months earlier, is part of the India Seniors team led by Sourav Ganguly. I’m there waiting for a friend who’s also a guest at the hotel.

  Meanwhile, at the other end of the lobby, Dhoni steps out of the lift and is immediately swarmed by a gaggle of reporters—many of whom I would go on to share a press box with. I was in college back then and had no ambitions of becoming a journalist. Decked casually in a T-shirt and shorts, Dhoni wades past them, his rust-coloured mane resting on his shoulders. He doesn’t say a word. Instead, he shakes his head twice before sauntering into the café for breakfast. Many of the reporters choose to leave, while some stick around the entrance of the café before they too are politely asked to leave by the hotel authorities.

  I stand there amused by the melee. Little did I know then that, in less than five years, this joke would be on me too and that I would end up spending hours in hotel lobbies and a lot of other places waiting for Dhoni and get nothing more than that impish smile from him for my efforts.

  The character assassination of Dhoni, by the way, isn’t over though. The young men aren’t done yet.

  ‘Aur, bhaiya, baal toh dekho. Cricketer lagta
bhi hai kya? (And, brother, look at his hair. Does he even look like a cricketer?),’ says one. This last point resonates with me. There I stand not too far from them, my hair nearly till my waist, and very used to these taunts about us, the follicly blessed. There’s something about long-haired guys that most Indians don’t trust. Funny that, considering they have grown up listening to fables, mythological tales and religious texts where the protagonists all sport long manes and are extolled for their values. But when someone like me does it, it’s considered too outré. And you end up hearing the ‘same old clichés’ that Bob Seger sings about in ‘Turn the Page’: ‘Is it woman, is it man?’

  I would have these Tamil maamis (aunts) walking up to my mother and consoling her. ‘Despite the hair, Usha, your son is a good boy,’ they’d say. Their words would also be accompanied by looks of extreme concern. ‘Hippy’ was a word that would be thrown around rather frivolously. It was as if they were all trying to say, ‘Baal toh dekho, aapka beta lagta bhi hai kya? (Look at his hair. Does he even look like your son?)’ My mother’s reaction would generally range from surprise to bewilderment and, after a while, she gave up trying to defend me. She would simply nod in agreement. But perhaps at some level, she too bought into the theory that long hair on a man meant trouble.

  And it would have been understandable if it was one of those maamis writing off M.S. Dhoni’s cricketing credentials at the Taj lobby based only on the length of his hair. But these were two contemporary cricketers, one of whom had already shared a dressing room with the young wicketkeeper batsman from Ranchi.

  Within a year anyway, Dhoni’s hairstyle was the only thing India and Pakistan were both agreeing on. The mane was there to stay. Even dictator Pervez Musharraf agreed. He, in fact, ordered Dhoni to not even think about chopping his locks off. By then, Dhoni had also smashed two blitzkrieg centuries, including the highest one day international (ODI) score by any wicketkeeper, established himself among the most destructive batsmen in world cricket and was just a year away from taking over as India’s T20 captain and winning the inaugural World T20, and chopping off his hair.

  It was not like Dhoni was a stranger to petty comments about his appearance. He had, in fact, heard worse. He was used to being typecast as an outcast from a young age. He was used to being an outsider. He was also more crucially used to being an outlier who proved people wrong at every step of his fascinating journey. The way he’s managed to do it forms the focus of this book as we try to break into Indian cricket’s most popular enigma who has remained a mystery wrapped in a million-dollar bubble. This is not the story of where he’s come from or where he’s reached. It’s about how he got there. It’s not about how the Dhoni legend was born or how it was made, but about how his rational approach to life and cricket helped him scale dizzying heights. A man whose feet remained firmly on the ground despite the countless groundbreaking feats that made him the foremost sports star of his generation.

  In India, Sachin Tendulkar stands for perfection. The perfect ten. The man who could do no wrong. The man who was marked for greatness, prepared for greatness, and achieved greatness beyond anyone’s imagination. He was a prodigy who grew up to be a prodigy.

  Dhoni wasn’t any of that. Dhoni did the unexpected and continues to do so. He’s the quintessential odd man out. He’s as cut off from the system as you can be in the context of Indian cricket. He started his career playing for Bihar, a team that pretty much didn’t exist on the Indian cricket map. Or it did just because it had to. However, in less than a decade, he ended up putting Ranchi (now in Jharkhand) on the world cricket map.

  There’s a reason I have started off with his hair. The way he handled his hair over the years is in many ways the way he’s dealt with his career, both on and off the field—with common sense, a lot of practical ingenuity and some unmatched foresight. There’s of course been a lot of serendipity that’s helped him along the way. But you can’t hold that against him.

  Dhoni held on to his long hair even after becoming an Indian cricketer; perhaps that was because it fit perfectly with the youth icon image that he was targeting to project in terms of endorsements. And when he knew he’d gone past that budding superstar phase and become a full-fledged megastar after the World T20, he got rid of it.

  He embraced the power of social media before any of his peers or even those who came after him. Despite being a man whose life story remained closed to the world, he was the first active cricketer to produce a movie about his life in which he revealed only as much as was required to make it a commercial hit. And a movie that required a lot of cajoling from his management team to get him to see—Dhoni is learnt to have watched it eventually in four sittings.

  It was the hair that drew me to him in the first place, and not with any great fondness. In the early noughties, sporting a longish mane not only made you a social outcast, you also drew some unkind comparisons of the Bollywood kind. And considering Dhoni and I started growing our hair the same year, chances are he had to deal with the same.

  By the time my hair had reached neck-length, I was ‘Sanju Baba’ (the actor Sanjay Dutt). It only got worse from there. Tere Naam released in early 2003, and my hair, unfortunately, had the exact same length as Salman Khan’s in the movie. The natural middle parting didn’t help either. So, I would find myself serenaded with the song ‘Tumse Milna, Baatein Karna’ and have no option but to offer a wry smile in response. By 2004, the hair had moved on to that ‘rock star’ or, let’s say, ‘hippy’ phase. Then along came Dhoni.

  The first time I heard of him was when the rest of the world did, during his exploits on the India A tour to Nairobi in August 2004. It was a friend who alerted me. Dhoni’s emergence also coincided with the heavy-metal phase of my life when I was surrounded by long-haired men. So, it wasn’t surprising that the first thing I heard about Dhoni was, ‘Uske baal dekhe? (Have you seen his hair?)’ And yes, it was unique.

  I had never before seen a batsman with hair flowing down from the back of his helmet like Dhoni’s was. Yes, Jason Gillespie sported a mullet and even Kapil Dev had experimented with a ponytail in the twilight of his career. But never before had I seen someone with hair like mine—even if it had that very earthy orange shade and looked intentionally straightened—donning a cricket helmet. It didn’t even matter then that he was actually hitting the ball almost as hard as Adam Gilchrist. So, the first thought in my mind was, ‘Oh no, now everyone will start calling me Dhoni.’ And I was so right about that. It was both obvious that Dhoni was a star in the making—not because I had any prophetic powers but because it was just that obvious—and that I would soon go from being a Salman Khan wannabe to a Dhoni wannabe. A few years later it would get worse when Ishant Sharma came on to the stage. But I’m not comfortable talking about that phase yet.

  Things did get better for both Dhoni and me as he became more successful. His hair had become the rage of the country and there were many around India sporting the Dhoni hairdo, while mine had long overgrown that length. The more he succeeded, the more he swayed those around me towards believing that it wasn’t so bad, after all, for a man to let his hair down, quite literally—you could still be successful, very successful, and have more than a billion people rooting for you. Even those maamis’ attitude started changing and now at similar social gatherings where I was used to being frowned upon, I was often the cynosure. ‘Apdiye Dhoni maari irrakaane von pullai. (Your son looks just like Dhoni.),’ they would say in Tamil, and my mother would end up beaming.

  However, I grew a fondness for Dhoni only after he decided to chop off the locks. It meant that I was no longer being convinced by every new person I met that my hairstyle was inspired by him.

  His reaction to the idea of this book and what it would be about was typical Dhoni. I had stopped him just before he entered the gladiator–pit-like pathway towards the dressing room at the Maharashtra Cricket Association (MCA) stadium and told him, ‘I’m writing a book on you. But it’s not a biography since you’ve already release
d a movie about your life. It’ll be my attempt at unravelling your enigma.’ The word ‘enigma’ brought a smile on his face. He never quite committed to either giving me an interview or not giving one for this book. Unfortunately, an interview never happened. Although once before an Indian Premier League (IPL) training session, he did make a very startling revelation or declaration of Dhoni-esque proportions.

  ‘Kuch socha? (Have you given it any thought?),’ I asked him. ‘Unnees ke baad. (After the nineteenth.),’ he replied. For the record, it was 14 April 2017. I thought that’s not bad. There are those who’ve waited for the proverbial eternity to get Dhoni to talk. I can’t obviously be complaining about a five-day wait. And without even trying to mask my delight, I ended up uttering, ‘Oh, that means only five days. That’s great.’ Dhoni immediately spun around and flashing that familiar smile again, said, ‘Do hazaar unees ke baad. (After 2019.)’ At first I felt a mixture of despair and anger at being snubbed like this. But in truth, he’d misunderstood my question. It was a period when everyone, probably even the selectors, involved with Indian cricket was either keen on knowing about or gunning for his retirement.

  And by the time I could clarify, Dhoni had sauntered off. This was the first of many attempts made during the IPL to get the definitive answer. From that point on, whenever the Rising Pune Supergiant (RPS) had a practice session at their home ground, I was there, stationed at that same spot where I’d informed him about the book. It was right below the dressing rooms and in the path which the players took to enter the ground; with Dhoni you have to always pick the right time and the right place and not just hope to be there. Even those closest to him would agree.

  Dhoni would come and Dhoni would leave. He would stop, smile and exchange a few sweet nothings and then move on too swiftly for us to go beyond that. That was our IPL X routine.