Dhoni leads India out of corner against West Indies & into the quarter-finals with unbeaten 45
Indian skipper MS Dhoni is grinning from ear to ear. He is in a happy space from where those white streaks in his hair tell you sternly that dislodging him from this perch would be a crime against the nation, something he will not allow you to commit — despite that relaxed smile of his.
This would be Dhoni’s last World Cup, definitely as skipper and generally as a player too. And as swan songs go, this captain likes them white, graceful, perfect, poised and swimming in blue. He is the types who will fight tooth and nail any attempted or inadvertent diversion from the course of victory — something that he showed by guiding India out of a difficult phase in the Holi day match against the West Indies at Perth. With six gone for just 134 runs, he made a gritty 45* to escort India to the required 183, in just 39.1 overs.
It was a historical figure he had on map, the most revered one actually, over the three decades. That was the number with which the Indian team had ousted West Indies from the 1983 World Cup Final to lift the trophy. This time the clash and the number, and a somewhat similar result, has come a tad earlier into the tournament, giving India its much-deserved quarter-final berth.
Thanks to Dhoni and the way he has guided his boys out of the recent T&T (Test and Triseries) implosion, India is now trending. It has stormed into the knockouts, is on top of the group, has had an incredible bowling makeover and its fielders have taught batters to not take them for granted. It is Team India’s eighth straight win, carrying over from the last World Cup.
But wait! Dhoni says it’s not him, or Shami, or Ashwin, or Kohli or Shikhar for that matter. The skipper is talking ‘collective’, leaving individual glorifications for a later date. He wants to, and is compelling his men, to “hunt in packs”.
The resultIJ His bowlers are a unit, giving partnerships that were earlier only referred to around his batsmen. They have tamed the dangerous urge for variety and learnt that the maximum dividends are earned on the more monotonous sticking to a particular line and length, a prescribed regulation bowling.
If Mohammed Shami was Man of the Match at Perth with a 3/35, there was reason to cheer. He has taken the mantle of bowling the new ball with earnestness and result. He is fielding well too, much like Mohit Sharma who dropped Chris Gayle at mid-on, only to help in the run out of Marlon Samuels in the very same ball.
“What we said is that we want partnerships — both in batting and in bowling. We are not emphasizing too much on individual performance. What we are looking for is what kind of partnerships the two individuals while bowling are creating. The essence of the team is how to win games. Definitely Shami has bowled well, but alongside other bowlers. Because, if you’re leaking runs from one end, it’s difficult to get wickets and contain batsmen from the other end,” he explains — like an elder statesman of the game.
And when all this is not working beautifullyIJ In comes: ‘Name is Dhoni, job is destructing pressure’. With India 6 down and Jerome Taylor flying fearfully, Dhoni found his touch, that special corner from where he gets ignited into battle, that corner from where he loves emerging victorious. Calming frayed nerves and partnering a rotation duty with Ashwin, he steered India away from possible defeat at the West Indies match in Perth, with team director Ravi Shastri definitely saying in the dressing room later, “that one went right to the wire my boys.”
But jokes apart, 40 wickets in just four matches, bowling out four oppositions much before the 50 overs, is an achievement that has evoked wonderment and flipside tags like “Incredible India.” For Dhoni though, it has been a long haul preparation, counselling, de-briefing and conditioning of his bowlers that has worked.
“What fast bowlers have done really well is to understand the importance of hitting that length and not trying too many different things. It is something you have to taste as a fast bowler, as a fast bowling unit, to start believing in that. When you come from the sub-continent, you don’t bowl a lot of overs, so whenever you get an opportunity to bowl, you look for wickets. You want to bowl six different deliveries. But outside the subcontinent in places where the kookaburra ball is used and if it stops swinging up for a while, you have to stick to the right length. They have started believing in that as a unit, and that’s why we see them not trying too many different things and instead keep hitting the same areas. That’s paying off. Our unit is bowling well. Whether they are the best in the world doesn’t really matter to me because my players are the ones who will perform for the team. Hopefully, we’ll keep the injuries out of the way, and we’ll be playing with the best 11. If we can do that, definitely our bowling will be very challenging,” he tells you.
Attending his Press meetings gives an insight into how Dhoni has matured from 2011 to 2015. In 2011, he was too angry with the media (reason unknown) and would often give unfathomable answers to straight questions. He is still angry for whatever reason but there’s a distinct change in him — he is talking more sense, explaining more, almost as if he knows these are the last few interactions with the media at a big stage like a World Cup.
No, that does not mean he has mellowed down with the media. He still stings them every now and then, on every opportunity he gets, riling them with wry humour and sarcasm, pitting them against each other, running away from intrusive post-PC pursuers and overall not allowing that much needed “access” that all other teams give to journalists respecting ICC rules.
“We won’t give ratings or a points system because once the World Cup campaign is over there will be a newspaper, like The Times of India, and a lot of times they will all give us points. This individual gets this much and they’ll sit in an examination,” he says sarcastically, evidently resenting the assessment of his boys by people he considers rank outsiders at best and trouble-mongers at worst.
Dhoni’s cat and mouse game with journalists is in direct contrast to his always ticking mind when it comes to the game. The cool dude thing is a hit but it is a veneer too. “Even I am nervous,” he admits while talking of navigating sticky positions. But then “I have no choice at No 7. Sometimes too many wickets are gone, sometimes too many runs are left to be made. But I have learnt to deal with this pressure,” he says, at the same time defending positions like No 5 in the game.
“How many runs can one really make coming 35th or 36th over downIJ look into history and you will see no one really has performed well at No 5, except Yuvraj Singh who got promoted to No 4. People at this position can be selfish (‘bhaiya 30-35 banao our safely ghar jao, kyun panga lo’) but we have to guard against such mindset,” he said in defence of Raina’s lean run phase. He is happy with the batter’s run rate, a fact he points out to insist it’s the run rate that matters not the number of runs.
Dhoni’s pressers have, indeed, lengthened. He is talking more, explaining more, spending more time on discussing the game from his perspective (like how elevated the WACA pitch is from the wicket-keeper’s angle) and that gives a lot of insight into the thinking that goes on at fever pitch in his mind. He understands the game as very few people do. He can see ahead, envisage situations, plot, adjust, innovate and orchestrate plans much before the opposition gathers wind of his strategies and that’s something unique about him.
Not that all this relaxed hindsight makes him escape the consistent shortcomings of people like Ravindra Jadeja who has not been performing well with the bat despite all the cushioning and the chances. “He needs to improve and needs to step up. We have a lot of faith in him but at the end of the day you can’t really play with hope. What you want is actual performance on the field,” he says without hiding the punch of his dismay.
And then, he suddenly gets annoyed with an innocuous question like ‘how the journey so far has been.’ He is angry about the long haul flights and midnight drops into venues like Hamilton to play a match and then move on. The schedule may have tired out the new dad but that has in no manner dimmed the work ethics for the change needed from playing in Australia to going over to New Zealand where the conditions, pitches, swing, pace, boundaries and atmosphere — everything is different and needs acclimatisation, something that shortage of time will not accord him.
Team India reached Hamilton past midnight on March 7, takes time off on March 8 and returns to train on March 9 morning for the match against Ireland on March 10. And then moves on to Auckland for meeting with Zimbabwe on March 14 to next go to, most probably, Melbourne for the quarterfinal – if that is, it remains on the top of Group B.
“The conditions will be slightly different. The grounds will be slightly smaller. But again, the last tour when we were there, to some extent that will help us, knowing the condition, the grounds and all of that. Hopefully, since we have played with the same set of players for a long period now, the last two, two-and-a-half, three years, hopefully they remember what needs to be done,” he says.
That’s just an aside, maybe a warning to his unit, against under-performing. That’s Dhoni for you — Baconian with brevity and advisories, abrupt with sustained over-indulgence and adventurous only when there’s no other way in the middle.