WHAT YOU DON’T SEE WHEN YOU SEE DHONI
Everyone in cricket has an M.S. Dhoni selfie, but nobody has his number, so to speak
but the tension was too much…. There can never be another M.S. Dhoni.”
The ability to think on his feet and soak up pressure in tight situations served him well as a leader. Almost irrespective of the match situation, Dhoni looked in control; in fact he looked a step ahead of the competition. Rarely did Dhoni react when a catch was dropped, a terrible ball bowled, an indiscreet shot played. “Those things make a huge difference. When you bungle, you’re already feeling bad. If the captain is calm, it soothes your nerves,” says Ajinkya Rahane, a regular in the national side and among the best readers of the modern game.
Asenior academic at IIM Calcutta says M.S. Dhoni is a favourite B-school case study. “Who decodes that mind better can break a deadlock between two candidates in an interview,” he says. MSD’s modest early life is too well-storied to bear repetition, but it’s worth reminding ourselves that it was he who really gave wings to the cricketing aspirations of small-town India (he comes from Ranchi in Jharkhand); it was Dhoni more than anyone else who gave underprivileged aspirants in India the hope that perhaps they could do it too. In putting Ranchi on India’s cricket map, Dhoni nurtured dreams and changed Indian cricket forever. It’s an interesting coincidence that India’s first World Cup-winning skipper, Kapil Dev, also came from a cricketing backwaters of his time. In 1983, when India won the first World Cup, Chandigarh had no cricket pedigree; it was not the fancied cricket destination of today.
MSD was far from perfect, though. He was not as naturally gifted as Tendulkar or as resilient as Gavaskar or as flamboyant as Kapil Dev. Nor was he a stylist with the bat—he was no David Gower or V.V.S. Laxman or Mohammed Azharuddin, whose batting grace
people love to wax lyrical about. Nor was he a natural behind the stumps. But he made up for the lack of those gifts in ways that others can only envy. On the field, as captain, keeper and batsman, especially in the white ball game, he was matchless. And if you’ll measure him simply by his success, then try and beat his three biggest trophies—the World T20 (2007), the ODI World Cup (2011) and the ICC Champions Trophy (2013)—not to forget, India’s ascent, under his leadership to the #1 position in the ICC Test rankings.
That record, by itself, speaks volumes for why Mahendra Singh Dhoni has earned for himself a permanent place among the pantheon of cricketing greats. If you ask Ravi Shastri, he’ll tell you that he counts him among the greatest ever. But even beyond the gifts of mind and body or leadership, the man stands for, and is driven by, a certain process-based work ethic without overinvesting himself in the end result. That brings a lightness of spirit to his adventures on the field and lights up the smile that cricket aficionados and fans the world over will remember for a long, long time. ■
When he burst onto the scene, Dhoni was a complete unknown, in more ways than one. He was different from anything one might have expected. The long, straightened hair was not a cultivated look but the meaty hitting of a cricket ball with violent power was cultivated. The halting, idiosyncratic English was not aspirational but making a life in cricket was a clearly articulated ambition, to be followed through, come what may. From unknown in 2004 to unknowable in 2020, Dhoni’s international career has played out under intense scrutiny for more than a decade and a half, and when he walked away from the game, whistling a tune to himself, the greybeard left everyone scratching their heads, trying to make sense of what they had witnessed.
Back in 2006 after his first full season as an international cricketer, I sat Dhoni down for an interview. More accurately, Dhoni sat me down for an interview. Those were the days when Dhoni still believed in giving interviews. He was already making a name for himself as a cricketing hermit. Telephones distressed him and he actively distrusted reporters and the role they played in a cricketer’s life. While Dhoni did have a mobile phone and would even hand out the number, he never answered it. In hotels, the reception would have instructions to mark his room landline as ‘Do Not Disturb’; if they failed to do so, the receiver would be off the hook.
There are many famous stories, including assorted apocrypha, of Dhoni’s relationship with telephones. One happened when N. Srinivasan was secretary of the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) and by that token the convenor of the selection committee. Hard as he tried, Srinivasan just couldn’t get hold of Dhoni to ascertain his availability for a future meeting. Communication was re-established when the two were face to face again, but it is not clear how that came about. Then there was the time Amitabh Bachchan was attempting to get hold of Dhoni to congratulate him for something or the other, only to find his calls and messages ignored. The actor everyone seems to want a piece of then took to Twitter to convey his greetings. Which also went unacknowledged.
For a time, it was said Dhoni had the world’s most expensive pager, because that was how he used his mobile phone. You did not call Dhoni, he called you. But this was not out of disrespect but an instinct to protect himself and his time. In that early interview, it became clear that Dhoni knew his mind. When
the stripling was asked if he had spoken to the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid on dealing with his newfound fame, he said: “I haven’t had a chat with them specifically about this. But I’ve learnt from them, by watching them. How they interact with each other, how they interact with the media … I’ve made one thing clear. I don’t want to get into controversies. If I don’t want to speak about something, I won’t.”
He did learn from his seniors in the team, but Dhoni did not copy. The first thing he did when he was established was to cut out everything extraneous to his cricket. Gone were the interviews, and press conferences were limited to what was compulsory. Even in those pressers, there were questions he simply would not address. Most importantly, the team bubble was sealed. The leaking of stories about each other stopped and discussions on selection stayed confidential. Dhoni’s men were given a simple brief: play cricket, stay true to your team and to hell with the rest.
This is not to say that Dhoni was rude or standoffish—far from it. When he met you, at a cricket ground or an event or an airport lounge, he would be the first to disarm with a wisecrack. Which is why everyone has a Dhoni story, even if they cannot claim to be part of the Dhoni story. It was while waiting for a delayed flight that we had one of our longer interactions, in which Dhoni laughed when it was put to him that he now had the baton from the leading lights, and it was up to him to run with it. “If you think I’m going to have a 15year career like Sachin or Rahul, and play a hundred Tests and all that, you are in for a surprise. I’m just here to play cricket. When that goes, I’m gone. You won’t hear from me again.”
That, of course, has turned out to be anything but true.
Which brings us to another of Dhoni’s strengths—his adaptability. At the end of his career, it is almost forgotten that he came to the world of cricket as a monstrous striker of the ball. Here was a batsman who could clear the ropes at will, with a combination of brute strength and shot selection not seen in Indian cricket. When he was swinging for the fences as a youngster, it seemed that he was a carefree batsman, a sort of daredevil, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Dhoni was, in fact, among the more riskaverse cricketers to be successful across formats over an extended period. In limited overs cricket, it was his ability to assess risk, without fearing the consequences of failing, that enabled him to transition from being a charismatic slogger into a fearsome batsman who controlled the tempo of an innings from start to finish.
Psychologists will offer a simple example of how the human mind deals with this. Walking a one foot wide path marked on solid ground is child’s play. The same task on a plank balanced between two chairs, three feet off the ground, is iffy, but almost everyone will be game enough to try it. If the same plank is straddling two buildings, a hundred feet off the ground, only those who chase the thrill of danger will venture voluntarily. In a way, the task is the same but the challenge is vastly different because the downside is dramatically different.
Dhoni’s batting was marked by an ability to ignore the downside, under pressure or scrutiny. It is for this reason that it mattered little to him whether he was playing at the MECON Ground in Ranchi, in front of three dogs and a man, or in the final of a World Cup, in front of a capacity crowd at the Wankhede Stadium. It is for this reason that he has finished nine run chases with a six, something no other cricketer has done. Where you and I see needless risk, he looks into himself and trusts the process, to the exclusion of everything else.
Being such a great manager of risk strengthened Dhoni’s legend in limited overs cricket, where he spent a lifetime reducing chases to a shoot-out between himself and the bowler, where he stripped the situation of all external factors till nothing was left but him with a bat in hand facing the ball that was coming at him. But his carefree manner, his ability to play the big shots, his apparent unflappability and the calm at the crease that comes from his Zen-like immersion in the simple task of playing the next ball are often misunderstood as an appetite for risk. In fact, the unwillingness to roll the dice made him one of the more defensive Test captains India has had. In the longer format, the path to the finish line is not clear till late into the game, and you have to do things hoping the chips will fall as you hope. Dhoni did not live on hope, and when he couldn’t see a way of getting the job done, he simply shut shop and refused to lose the game.
Paddy Upton, who worked with the Indian team to create the right environment for mental well-being and success, has a theory about mental toughness and results. Upton, who does not go by the title sports psychologist, is nevertheless a keen student of the human mind and how it works, both academically and in practice. “When we study the best of the best, consider the following as a list of definitions associated with mental toughness: massive belief in self and one’s ability; emotional control; clear thinking under pressure; ruthless pursuit of goals; operating well in chaos; not intimidated by others; unaffected by loss and failure; quick to spot weaknesses in opponents; inspirational, popular, influential; compulsive liar.”
Wait, what? Yes, Upton slips that in, because he is listing the characteristics of psychopathy, rather than just mental
toughness. But, before you deem him a nutjob, there’s more. “What if I told you that the academics who studied mental toughness among elite athletes might unknowingly have unearthed their psychopathic traits and prescribed these as characteristics of mental toughness? Barring only one or two, the traits are the same. This is the reason for so many psychopaths achieving such high levels of success in business, as well as in politics and sport.”
Close your eyes and think of Dhoni, and you will see a tick against each of those boxes, save one—about being a compulsive liar. Then again, one way to ensure you do not lie is to say nothing at all. Upton explains this in terms more clearly understood by laymen. “The only difference between a corporate psychopath and Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs) & co., who torture animals as children and end up as jailed serial killers as adults, is their propensity for violence.” Before you jump to conclusions, Upton was not, at any point, referring to Dhoni when he spoke of this, but it’s hard not to be struck by how well the shoe fits. “I have worked with a few psychopaths. I’ve seen the so-called attributes of mental toughness in them, which help deliver results on the field. I have seen how fans, friends and the media adore these people. But I have also seen what it looks like when their mental toughness is unmasked as psychopathic behaviour,” he says.
Before this sounds like a hatchet job on Dhoni, consider the legacy he has left, the system he has created:
➦ A youngster making his way into the Indian team today feels no pressure to conform to the image of an Indian cricketer the world constructed: look at Hardik Pandya, the way he plays, the way he carries himself, the way he lives his public life.
➦ A gifted youngster on his way to the top feels no need to be subservient to the big cogs in the wheel: look at Virat Kohli, the way he relates to coaches and selectors, cricket administrators and the media.
➦ A youngster aspiring to break the shackles of his history and geography does not wait to be invited to take a seat at the table: look at Jasprit Bumrah, the way he has kept his identity intact while going from obscurity to being the most feared Indian fast bowler going.
The legacy of Dhoni and more than that the point of Dhoni is that he did not come into Indian cricket and fit himself into the mould. Rather, he imposed himself on the environment around him, transplanted his thinking into the minds of those who set the agenda and left Indian cricket a better place than it was when he began.
When Tendulkar retired, the nation found itself in the grip of an emotional extravaganza. When Dhoni slid away, through a side door like the one he used to enter, many must stand in silent gratitude. If Tendulkar opened a door to let himself in, Dhoni left it ajar for the best of the rest to follow in his footsteps. ■
THE POINT OF DHONI IS THAT HE DID NOT FIT HIMSELF INTO THE MOULD. RATHER, HE IMPOSED HIMSELF ON THE ENVIRONMENT AROUND HIM, TRANSPLANTED HIS THINKING INTO THE MINDS OF THOSE WHO SET THE AGENDA