The Dhoni Touch

by Bharat Sundaresan

  He also agrees with my theory that every Dhoni wicketkeeping video should come necessarily with a WWE-style disclaimer. Whether it’s him showcasing the Nataraja pose or catching the ball like he’s catching fish, the world needs to be forewarned to not ‘try a Dhoni at home, school, work or while getting off the train’.

  9

  Thala

  It is a plain No. 7 yellow jersey with nothing else but Thala written on it. ’Nuff said. There is no CSK logo. There is no India Cements logo. They’re not required. Dhoni has made his point. CSK are back. And so is their Thala.

  It is 15 July 2017, the day after CSK’s two-year suspension has ceased. The two-time official champions are now part of the IPL family again. Dhoni has just returned from a lengthy tour, which started in England for the Champions Trophy and was followed by a three-week dash around the Caribbean. And here he is posing in front of his home with pet dog Sam saluting his Thala for good measure in the background.

  There was a lot of speculation in the media about how CSK would announce their return. Would it be an elaborate ad campaign? Maybe a bunch of catchy WWE-style vignettes with some whistles thrown in there? Sure, the two-time champions who’ve always boasted of the most zealous fan following in the IPL wouldn’t make a comeback without any fanfare. Then, Dhoni does just that. The message is subtle and all-encompassing at the same time. And they don’t have to do anything else.

  But if you thought it was a well-planned and executed master stroke from the CSK management, then think again. For, on July 15, while Dhoni’s Thala picture was going viral, S. Chockalingam and his team were sitting in shock at their offices in Chennai. Chockalingam, or Chocka, is the creative director at OPN Advertising, which has handled CSK’s ad and social media campaigns since the franchise’s inception.

  ‘He did it by himself totally. None of us had anything to do with it. It was a total surprise to us when we saw his Instagram post,’ says Chocka.

  Thala is simply Tamil for head. And unless you’re from Chennai, there’s no other significance to it. In Chennai, it’s a title. It’s not to be confused with Thalaiva, which is, of course, Rajinikanth. Even if he might walk the streets like an ordinary man, Rajinikanth is a demigod who, simply put, is above everyone and everything else—if you are prone to hyperbole, like most of the great man’s fans. In a city so obsessed with cinema, his is a status that is unattainable. To the extent that I’ve never heard Thalaiva being used lightly, even amongst a bunch of friends. Unlike how Thala is, and frequently so. Thala is someone you can relate to.

  Perhaps it’s got to do with the man who holds that title, Ajith, a romantic hero turned action star. He is unlike other movie heroes in the south. While he does enjoy a cult following, Ajith doesn’t carry an aura or a halo. Despite playing superhero on the screen routinely, off it his greatest attribute is how he has never let his superstardom take over his life. He’s somehow escaped from becoming larger than life, much like Dhoni has. So Thala was a perfect fit for Chennai’s latest superstar, and, of course, the fact that he was CSK captain. They share more in common too.

  Dhoni loves bikes. Ajith loves cars. When Dhoni’s not playing, he’s taking his beloved bikes for a ride around Ranchi. Ajith is a race car driver and competes around the world.

  ‘We called him Thala for the first time in the Whistle Podu version in 2010. We were apprehensive in the beginning about whether it’ll be accepted, considering how big Ajith is. But people accepted Dhoni readily as their Thala, and though it took him a while, he is now very aware of the significance of being one,’ says Chocka.

  CSK is unlike the nearly hundred other brands and products that Dhoni has endorsed as the ultimate pan-Indian pin-up boy of the advertising industry over the last ten years. Some might argue it’s not even in the same bracket as a pure brand. But think of all the brands that Dhoni has been an ambassador for and still none has become as synonymous with him as CSK.

  And you can’t help but agree with V.B. Chandrasekhar when he says, ‘In Chennai when they see Dhoni’s face, they see a lion, and when they see a lion’s face, they see Dhoni.’ Dramatic indeed, almost like a Thalaiva movie scene.

  We will touch upon the Dhoni–Chennai love affair in the next chapter. But I want to probe a little further here into what really makes this unlikely twain meet. Straightaway, I realize it’s not the usual case of opposites attracting. The more I ask, the more I realize that this aspect of Dhoni’s life is less enigmatic and more meant-to-be.

  Chocka believes that while ‘small town boy making it big’ narratives strike a chord in most places around the country, nowhere else are they as much an inherent fibre of mainstream cinema as in Chennai.

  ‘Oh, at one point of time he was like us and now he’s right up there where we can only dream of being. That immediately brought them closer to him. And the fact that he’s remained understated like most of our stars, including Rajinikanth, while not in film, added authenticity and more appeal to him,’ says Chocka.

  Chandrasekhar recalls having told Dhoni after seeing him lift his dhoti and dance with Prabhu Deva in a bike ad that he would have to do better since ‘we are the land of Rajinikanth’. ‘I think I will do as well as him (as an actor),’ Dhoni had replied in jest. Like Rajinikanth though, who shows up at all public events looking his age and without any frills, Dhoni can rarely, if ever, be spotted wearing shades inside an airport terminal, which for some reason is considered a professional hazard by most celebrities.

  Col Shankar, meanwhile, feels that it’s the lack of showiness among even the rich and wealthy in Chennai—in terms of the modesty in attire—that has drawn Dhoni towards his adopted home.

  ‘Sir, pata nahi tha itna bada aadmi hai woh, ghar gaye tabhi pata chala. Gaadi khadi thi. Woh toh chappal aur dhoti pehenke aa jaata hai, sir. (Sir, I didn’t know he was such a big man. Only after going to his house did I realize. There was a vehicle parked there. He used to come wearing dhoti and chappals, sir.),’ Dhoni would often reveal his bemusement to the colonel.

  Dhoni and Chennai could possibly have more cricket-related reasons for their successful courtship. While Chennai—or Madras, as it was called once—has always been counted among the powerhouses of Indian cricket, locals there have never really had a homegrown icon player. Unlike Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Hyderabad or even Chandigarh for that matter, they’ve never boasted of that one player who has given them bragging rights for a period of time.

  R. Ashwin comes the closest. He’s already the most capped Test cricketer from the state alongside S. Venkatraghavan. And nobody from Tamil Nadu has even got close to Kris Srikkanth’s 146 ODIs, the last of which came twenty-five years ago. This was true in 2008 as well, when most other big cities with a ‘cricket culture’ had their own ‘icon’ player to lead their respective franchises. Chennai went looking for one. So when Dhoni came along, they just swooped in and made him their own.

  Chennai’s claim to have the most ‘knowledgeable cricket crowd’ in the country has always invoked sniggers from most quarters. But it is true that no other venue has quite witnessed genuine appreciation for the opposition like Chepauk has over the years. Don’t forget, they even gave the Pakistani team a standing ovation—a blasphemous act for many venues around India you’d think. ‘They (the Chepauk spectators) are overall docile and not so rooted to the feeling of “only we can win”,’ says Chandrasekhar.

  He also believes that they only learnt to be partisan after Dhoni’s arrival. He recalls a match from IPL III where CSK chased down a biggish total against Kings XI Punjab. The video of that finish is worth watching. Dhoni hit Irfan Pathan for 16 runs in the final over, sealing it off with a six—his customary finishing manoeuvre of clubbing the ball over deep mid-wicket. What happened next has always left me intrigued. For one night alone, Dhoni celebrated like it mattered. It started with him shouting out what seemed like an expletive before he quickly lowered his head and continued muttering. He then delivered an upper-cut to himself with his visor taking the b
runt. I’ve always wondered whether the punch was just a continuation of that adrenaline discharge or whether he was remonstrating himself for having been demonstrative. He’s never come close to looking as pumped as he did that night in Dharamsala. The Dalai Lama was in attendance for that game. Chandrasekhar believes that the passion to win which their captain exuded so brazenly despite being someone who rarely indulges in any show of emotion, was what has changed the Chennai crowds and made them even more desperate for their team to win.

  ‘They don’t want to win . . . they desperately want to win. He didn’t have to do much. He just had to be himself,’ says Chandrasekhar. Just like he had to only get himself in front of a camera to tell the CSK universe to whistle for their Thala all over again.

  The Whistle Podu campaign, for all its raging popularity, didn’t come about from some great urge to create a phenomenon. It was more out of the fear of missing out. OPN Advertising is an interesting company. They still don’t have an official website despite having a client of CSK’s worth. But they can be forgiven. They’re still probably the only company in India that has a canine worker on board—Goofy, who has his own corner seat and business card, and was featured by the BBC, no less.* And they’ve been at the forefront of turning CSK into a rather chic outfit with smart and snappy ad campaigns and concepts.

  Back in 2009, when the IPL was shifted to South Africa, Chocka—who is one of the partners at OPN—was told to pack his bags and go to cheer CSK. As luxurious an offer as it was, he wasn’t chuffed. Fortunately, Hayden, Suresh Raina and Parthiv Patel were to spend a couple of days practising at Chepauk before flying out, and Chocka jumped at the opportunity. He was given half-hour windows to shoot whatever he chose with them. The challenge, as he reveals, was to come up with a way to engage with the fans when the team was away.

  ‘There was no point asking them to cheer for CSK. They’d do that anyway. So, we decided to show them how to cheer. And whistle was the obvious thing. On the first day, first show of any superstar movie in Chennai you’ll hear only whistles. Whistle Podu was born,’ says Chocka.

  Dhoni wasn’t part of the video—which went viral and was soon being sought after by the IPL’s official broadcasters—in 2009. But he was more than happy to be included when Chocka wrote to him a year later. Dhoni’s part was to be shot in the Chepauk dressing room after he was done with a practice session. Chocka was told he’d have five minutes. And five minutes was all it took. Dhoni came, said his line, ‘Chennai Super Kings ku whistle podu’, whistled in his own way and left. All in one take.

  This wasn’t the first time Chocka had shot with Dhoni. He had done a few stills with him in 2008 for IPL I. And at that first meeting itself he’d learnt what to expect from a Dhoni shoot.

  It starts with punctuality. Many a client or agency have been caught off guard by Dhoni landing up a few minutes before schedule, but never has he kept even one of them waiting. And once he’s there, Chocka emphasizes, he’s all yours. Some have even heard him say ’I am all yours’. But he’s particular about the time he gives. With Dhoni, thirty minutes is thirty minutes, not a minute more, not a minute less. He’s even known to set the stopwatch on his phone the moment he walks in. Chocka has been a witness to it. But like in life and on the cricket field, the principles that form the basis of Dhoni’s life shine through even in the studio.

  ‘He’s extremely in the moment here too. He might give us only five minutes, but that entire five minutes he’s with us. His mind is not anywhere else. He understands what we are trying to do and why we are doing it,’ says Chocka. In that first meeting 10 years ago, he also learnt about another Dhoni quirk.

  ‘That first shoot was just a few stills in a yellow jersey. He was very particular about the size and the fit of the jersey. He tried a few out before settling on one. He gave us thirty minutes and we were done by the 29th and he was happy.’

  Prahlad Kakkar hasn’t worked extensively with Dhoni but has done a few ads with him, including a few snappy ones for a pen company. The veteran ad guru counts him as one of the most cooperative and amenable celebrities he’s worked with. He also remembers him as being someone who doesn’t interfere much unless he has one of his ingenious ideas to share.

  ‘He’s a natural. You ask him to do something and he’ll do it in his own way. You ask him to do something, aisa kar, waise kar (do it this way, that way), he’ll turn around and say, “Mein actor nahi hoon. Mein aise hi karoonga. (I am not an actor. I’ll do it this way only.),”’ Kakkar tells me.

  I hear the ‘not an actor’ reference from one of Dhoni’s close aides too, with regard to how he views endorsements. While he’s aware of his brand value—which has made him a fixture in Forbes’ richest sportspersons list for a number of years—he remains an eternal realist about its longevity or the lack of it.

  ‘Brand endorsements sab jhoot hai. (Brand endorsements are all lies.) If I do this, I will get that, nothing like that exists. Tendulkar-paaji has told me one thing. You can improve every day as a cricketer. But by acting, I can’t become Amitabh Bachchan. I need to concentrate on what builds my brand, and that’s my cricket,’ he’s known to have told an aide once.

  Now, Chocka doesn’t say Dhoni is ever going to give Bachchan a run for his money, not now and not twenty years later either. But he insists that Dhoni rarely needs more than a single take to pull off whatever acting challenges get thrown at him. He brings up a digital shoot they did for a global oil company, which also happens to be his client, with Ajinkya Rahane and Faf du Plessis in the mix. Dhoni and his teammates were shown various scenarios from a match and asked to react as naturally as possible to the camera.

  ‘Oh my god, he was brilliant,’ Chocka exclaims, before adding, ‘I got Dhoni to react to things like somebody hitting a six, somebody missing a ball and his reactions were so spontaneous and brilliant. After seeing one clip, he said, “Arré, but I would never show any reaction to this on the field.” But when I insisted, he said, “Okay, let me have some fun with it.” He was superb.’

  And for a change, Dhoni apparently wasn’t ready to leave once his time was up. He wanted to stay back and see how Rahane was going to cope with the test. ‘With Jinks (Rahane), most of the reactions were the same, and Dhoni was rolling on the floor literally. I have never seen him laugh so much. I had never seen that side of him,’ says Chocka. This was perhaps Dhoni’s ‘childlike’ sense of humour which Matthew Hayden had told Gaurav Kapoor about on his show, Breakfast with Champions. ‘He has got that cheeky humour you probably do not see, but it’s all those silly things. He is not going to do all that stand-up comedy act. He is very childlike. He has retained his sense of passion from when he was 7. I love that about his personality,’ he tells Kapoor on the show where the actor-turned-IPL host gets cricketers to open up and show a side of them that rarely or never surfaces anywhere else in the public sphere.

  There are, in fact, a number of videos, generally to do with photo shoots, where Dhoni is seen getting stuck into a young cricketer for his acting or overacting, like he does these days with Hardik Pandya.

  It’s not just the ease with which he acts that Chocka is impressed with. He also talks about the various inputs that Dhoni comes up with during shoots, at times leaving the now seasoned ad director with the feeling that ‘he knows more about the field than I do’.

  He can also put his clients on the spot. The same oil company once did a campaign with Dhoni called ‘CEO of the Day’ where Dhoni turned out in a dapper suit and was asked to go about his business like he was the main man. ‘He fit into the role seamlessly. For me, that was another example of why he’s a true leader. But what I didn’t know was that, like with bikes, he can hold a conversation on anything. Like he really got the big officers of the company thinking with some of his questions. Like he asked, “With all these electrical cars and bikes coming into vogue, what happens to the oil your company keeps generating?” It was amazing,’ Chocka recalls.

  Dhoni’s fascination with anything unconventio
nal isn’t restricted to guns and war. He’s the same in the studio too. It’s when Chocka and others of his ilk push him to be a part of their novel and inventive concepts that he gets most excited. Like the time he was asked not to be the hero for a change in an ad that involved a fan academy of Manchester United. Dhoni agreed to play the part of a Man U fan, which he is anyway, and despite having committed to only an hour, was very happy playing a minor role in the overall advertisement.

  ‘Most of the others are very, very image-conscious. Dhoni is just plain practical even with ads. He never has any qualms with doing whatever is best for the product,’ says Chocka.

  The fourth season of the IPL was a seminal moment for the franchises in the league. There were two more added but it was the first time players were retained and club loyalties became an actual thing and not some foreseen gimmick. It also allowed those creating the ad campaigns around these teams to break the traditional mould and experiment a lot more. It meant Chocka could come into his own and, as a result, Dhoni warmed up to his director that much more.

  Chocka takes pride in informing me that he was the first person to shoot the promotional images of Dhoni right after he’d shaved his head following the World Cup win in 2011. But before we get into that shoot, a little anecdote about the night Dhoni went bald.

  The story goes that on the night of the World Cup final, once all the festivities had ended, Dhoni was in his room with his little entourage and a couple of teammates. While the conversation and jokes raged on, Dhoni disappeared into the bathroom. Some fifteen minutes later, there was a bit of concern around the room. There was no sign of Dhoni and even repeated knocks on the door were being ignored. But just as worry was about to turn into panic, they heard the door open. Sakshi was the first to spot him and is learnt to have screamed in surprise. For, there stood the man who’d won India the World Cup just a few hours earlier with the most famous six in Indian cricket history—and he had just gone bald.