Dhoni turns around match, so does Harsh

Goenka, brother of Rising Pune Supergiant’s owner Sanjeev Goenka, did a U-turn on his previous stance on MS Dhoni by praising his performance in the first Qualifier against Mumbai Indians.

Rising Pune Supergiant won the match by 20 runs after posting a 163-run target for Mumbai Indians to chase down at Wankhede Stadium on Tuesday.

Dhoni starred with a quick-fire unbeaten 40 off 26 balls. The former India captain exploded in the last two overs of Rising Pune Supergiant’s innings as he and Manoj Tiwary smashed Mitchell McClenaghan and Jasprit Bumrah for 41 runs. Dhoni hit four sixes in the space of nine balls to put the Pune team in control.

Harsh Goenka was seen in the stadium, applauding Dhoni’s innings.

He also took to social media platform Twitter to praise Dhoni, writing “Explosive batting by Dhoni, deceitful bowling by Sundar and great captaincy by Smith takes #RPS to the #IPL finals (sic),” with an image of himself applauding during the game.

On May 11, Goenka had uploaded an image of Dhoni with a caption informing his Twitter followers that the cricketer had visited his house.

These cordial posts are in stark contrast to Goneka’s messages earlier in the season when he was slammed by Dhoni fans for disrespecting the former India captain.

After leading the Rising Pune Supergiant to an abject secondfrom-bottom finish in the first season last year, Dhoni was relieved of team captaincy for this season, in lieu of Steve Smith taking over.

After Rising Pune Supergiant’s season-opening sevenwicket victory against Mumbai Indians on April 6 — in which Smith scored a game-winning unbeaten 84 — Goenka invited the scorn of Dhoni fans by saying picking the Australian as captain was the right choice and that Smith overshadows Dhoni.

Later on, he said the great thing about the Rising Pune Supergiant team is that there is a new hero in every game.

However, when listing the heroes in his May 3 post, Harsh failed to acknowledge Dhoni, irking fans yet again.

Many pointed to Dhoni’s unbeaten 61 against Sunrisers Hyderabad on April 22, questioning how the brother of the team owner could conveniently forget the wicketkeeper-batsman’s performances when taking time out to praise Rahul Tripathi, Ben Stokes, Steve Smith and Imran Tahir.

He (Smith) is doing a good job, but the results that we are getting it cannot be only credited to one person. Everyone has played their part.