Peerless MSD looks good for an extended stint in IPL

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Just towards the fag end of his ODI career as a captain, was MS Dhoni’s batting form as powerful as he is today in IPL? Experts may differ but the 2024 Dhoni is truly special in the way he is striking the cricket ball. Cricketers of his generations are either enjoying their lives playing golf or are involved in the game in terms of coaching and commentating, but Dhoni is still at it and the reason is simple: He is still so good. There is no rust in his batting.

At the ‘ripe old’ age of 42, he is so good that he can very easily keep going for a couple of IPL seasons. But in all probability he won’t. Some of his hits straight down the ground, lap-shot and God knows what all shots — remind us of old happy-go-lucky Dhoni between 2005 and 2007, who would come to the field and send the best bowling attack on the leather hunt with utmost ease.

Those who have seen Dhoni in action during the 2005 Pakistan tour, will tell you how he was a nightmare for the bowlers. With the long hair style like horse’s mane, which even the then Pakistani President couldn’t stop raving about, Dhoni didn’t take long to become the style icon of India by superseding legendary Sachin Tendulkar. He was just infectious in the way he grew inside the Indian minds.

Several years later, he is able to create the same kind of magic, which he did between 2005 and 2007.

Some of his teammates still believe that Dhoni wasn’t the same after the 2011 World Cup win. He ensured some of the top stars like Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir – never played for India. Tendulkar, opting for matches as per his choice before his impending 100th international century, wasn’t good enough to stay in ODI cricket. In the pretext of building a team for the 2015 World Cup, even a giant like Tendulkar was eliminated who just wanted to play a home series against Pakistan before signing off from ODI cricket in 2012. Unfortunately, India never won an ICC event after 2013.

Generally, an Indian captain has a shelf life of four to five years. But Dhoni superseded that also. From 2007 onwards, he captained India till 2017 – in different formats and decided to let go Test captaincy to elongate his white-ball career.He also has the distinction of giving Indian cricket the maximum talented player. He, however, didn’t want to quit ODI captaincy in 2017 and pass the baton to Kohli — the market forces did it.

But he always had that problem, which is persisting even now – that is to bat down the order.

Critics often said that Dhoni’s average in ODI cricket was so good because of the number of unbeaten knocks he played for India. As a Test captain too, he was only good at rank-turners and waited for the opposition to make mistakes and latched onto them like a hawk – a style that worked miraculously for Dhoni in the shortest formats of the game.

As luck would have it, Dhoni is still the heart-throb of his nation, and if BCCI has its way, he could become India’s next white-ball coach. But it is too low a salary for ‘Mahi Bhai’ as he is affectionately called by his peers. The way he is now like the Dhoni of old, a new role of a head coach or mentor won’t be a bad idea. Not that Dhoni is avaricious. He just likes to be paid if he has done the job well.

But what was that when a former teammate, who wasn’t invited for his wedding ceremony, had asked him to throw a party for Team India, he had said that he doesn’t have time to do so and time is always money for Dhoni. But India cricket won’t look the same the way it looks today without those three ICC wins tournaments that the nation won under Dhoni!