It’s Dhoni India and it is on fire. It’s Dhoni’s India and it’s on attack. It’s Dhoni’s India and it’s ticking — mentally, physically and strategically. The skipper is leading, moulding and setting up a way of life in cricket that was never the domain of India, that old-world gentle India. Gentle India is not Dhoni’s India as Ireland learnt the hard way at Seddon Park. Dhoni’s India is Machiavillian, it is experimental, it is aggressive and it is situation oriented. South Africa learnt it the intense way at MCG and Pakistan learnt it the clinical way in Adelaide. In between, West Indies learnt what death by asphyxiation bowling really meant at Perth.
All this raw aggression, this fierce togetherness, this earnest intent, this hunting in packs, this Nadal-like drive to amass every point, this precision performance – it’s some kind of a surreal play being unfolded to a dazed audience by crafty captain MS Dhoni, an audience which is still asking the same old question. How comeIJ
Dhoni smiles at the oft repeated query, even indulges in answering it all over again — after all he has just emerged from captaining a fifth straight victory in this World Cup so it’s ok to address repeated wonderment. From Adelaide to Melbourne, to Perth to Hamilton no one has stopped asking about the makeover of the unit, be it fielding, bowling or even the return of blade-runner Shikhar Dhawan.
And Dhoni has been patiently explaining. It’s all part of a plan, he says. It’s all happening because it is being executed well, he says. It’s all about adapting to conditions and using them to enhance the performance, he says. It’s all about listening to him where his bowlers are concerned. May be so, or may be, it’s the captain placing his pawns well.
When India defeated Ireland at Seddon Park in Hamilton to record its ninth straight win in the World Cups, Dhoni arranged it all and his soldiers executed it for him ably, not asking too many questions, not minding being thrown around, being shuffled at the drop of a run. So when the Irish openers attacked the Indian quicks, hitting Umesh Yadav for 11 runs in his very second over, Dhoni was there to get on to the spinners immediately. And when Ravindra Jadeja was taken to the cleaners in one over, Dhoni was again there to immediately get going with Raina and even drafting Rohit Sharma to change the complexion of the bowling.
Didn’t matter if Raina was a part timer, he was there for a purpose — to stem runs from one end with flat point to point regulation spin bowling to take down Ed Joice for just two runs as Ashwin hunted full on from the other end, two slips well in place. lesser men would have withdrawn into defence but not Dhoni, and never Ashwin.
“I was prepared for them to come at me,” Ashwin said after Ireland’s innings. “I had only one plan. I wanted to keep them coming at me and keep bowling well.” His skipper loved it. Soon, the 42-runs-old Paul Stirling was taken away and deposited into the safe hands of Ajinkya Rahane at long off, soon the run rate fell from 7 to 4.5; soon, the Irish were in a Dhoni maze from where it was difficult to emerge without regular casualties.
Porterfield showed some gumption but Dhoni threw in Mohit Sharma’s slower guile at him and the scalping was immediate. That it was Porterfield’s personal best against India (67) did not matter because reason and assembly were slipping away from his team. Niall O Brien (75) kept coming in Dhoni’s way. So Ashwin turned instead to his partner Balbirnie and Shami felled Kevin O’Brien depriving him a light for his fireworks. By the 49th over, Ireland were only a remnant of their earlier aggression.
From behind the stumps, Dhoni was reading everything, instructing, advising and planning. Of course, the Irish have no experience to deal with such a complicated cricketing chessboard but even bigger teams have often wondered where Dhoni is leading them to, never really being able to fathom before it is too late. That’s Dhoni’s acumen which singles him out from other captains. While Clarke has had a good team under his wing, Dhoni has chiselled one with long-term planning and modest resources, a planning that has stretched from 2011 to 2015, much like Brendon McCullum except McCullum’s brand is sheer aggression while Dhoni tops it with a careful mix of thoughtful construction and destruction.
The ferocity of his thoughts has never really burst out in the open where he is truly captain cool maturing into an elder statesman of the game. If he is a ticking bomb of planning in the middle, he is the smiling teacher at Press conferences. You think he brought on the spinners early and he tells you actually it was a little later than he would have against a better, bigger team. You think he is best when he is experimenting and he tells you “actually I am at my best when my bowlers are bowling well”. You tell him, he is in the hall of fame with Clive llyod with nine straight wins in World Cups and he tells you the only thing he wants is to keep winning, milestones can go stand by the side of his self-crafted road to success.
The World Cup may or may not be his for the second time in a row, but the bid he has made to get it will be a story generations will tell when time has passed and captains have changed. For now, India towers over the competition with five straight wins and a quarterfinal in Melbourne possibly against Bangladesh and then, if all goes well with form, it gets a ticket to the Sydney semifinal against either Australia or Pakistan. That would be a big one even for the beast called the MCG. But before that, India is left with just one match to play in the Group stage — against Zimbabwe. So much for makeovers — if anything could get bigger than this, the booty is all yours.