Editorial: MS Dhoni, the start to finish cricketer

To say that the enigmatic wicket-keeper batter is the best finisher limited-overs cricket has ever known is not only a massive compliment, it is also a huge understatement. The enigma element when viewed critically makes him actually look like a manipulator. Time and again we have had the man brazenly lead his team blindfolded, if one may say so, into the woods, only to emphatically spearhead it out. This has happened so often that our minds sometimes even refuse to accept the pattern as a mere coincidence.

But sponsors and the many stakeholders of the most popular sport in the country are certainly not complaining. Nor are owners of one of the costliest/ richest sporting clubs of the world.

Raise an ordinary game to a crescendo the paying public looks forward to, get the cash registers ringing loud and the TRPs soaring – Dhoni does it all the time.

For this, the gentleman (isn’t that razor-sharp mind always hidden under a disarming smile?) cricketer has a penchant for achieving the impossible like no one else. It is the alacrity with which the brought-upon herculean task is accomplished that leaves you hungry and waiting for more.

The magnificent strokes and the helicopter shot, which has a thousand eyes gaping in amazement, convince you that this is the real, sizzling world of cricket and Dhoni is on a roll as alway when he has a bat in his hands.

The point here is that even richly complimenting Captain Cool for his repertoire of shots is an understatement. Finisher par excellence he is, and it is he who began that too. It is with the advent of the man from Jharkhand (please bear with this, Chennaites) that India truly arrived on the international cricketing field. From an also-ran team, it turned into a potential threat to every cricketing nation across the globe. Something even the 1983 ODI World Cup win by Kapil Dev’s devils did not do.

No Wadekar or even Gavaskar could do enough consistently to make the giants of the game wake up and tell themselves that the sub-continental team was no more a pushover and no longer a team that took consolation in a Test draw.

On Thursday, the 40-year-young fit-as-a-fiddle game plotter had patrons of the Indian Premier League eating out of his padded hands, hoicking as he did boundary after boundary. And with the lastball victory, the neo-master blaster dragged Chennai Super Kings back into contention this season at the cost of a hapless Mumbai Indians.

His grey-haired admirers were indeed dismayed at a missed stumping chance, down the leg-side at that. Though the lapse did not prove costly, it was a stark reminder that the golden era of Mahi will have to end some day– much to the grief of his fans.