Just before Christmas, the Masters Champions League (MCL) released an advert featuring MS Dhoni. In it, Dhoni, chilling in the stands, tells us he is here not as a cricketer but as a fan.
“I have come here to tell you that our favourite cricketers are coming back to play on the field. Every fan will say one thing for sure ... we want sixes.” He finishes thus: “The Masters are back.”
It is a handy little endorsement for the MCL and there is a tie-in as well – Rhiti Sports management, which represents Dhoni, owns a team in the league.
But it also kind of felt apt that Dhoni should be promoting a league for retired, or semi-retired, cricketers, because soon, who knows, Dhoni might himself be eligible for such a league.
Are we getting ahead of ourselves here, especially for a man impenetrable to being second-guessed? Maybe, maybe not. But as Dhoni leads India out in their limited-overs series against Australia this week, think about how little we have seen or heard from Dhoni over the last six months.
He has been the veritable face of cricket in the country where the sport gets greatest exposure and he is still active. He led in the ODIs and T20s against South Africa but as limited-overs contests go in India, they were pretty low-key.
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And that was Dhoni’s first appearance after three months off, a break the length of which was once unthinkable for a man who played as often as him.
In fact, since Dhoni’s international debut in December 2004, only Kumar Sangakkara has been busier across all formats (having played 428 to Dhoni’s 412). Factor in the Indian Premier League (IPL) and nobody has been as burdened as Dhoni.
In 2015, however, Dhoni only played 22 international matches, the lowest amount of games he has ever played in a full calendar year, and by some distance too. Correspondingly, so too did his shadow recede from the Indian cricket scape.
That was not helped by his forced disassociation from Chennai Super Kings. He has joined Pune, the new IPL franchise, but the break with Chennai has added to an overriding sense of rootlessness about Dhoni.
Sure, at the pre-departure news conference for Australia, Dhoni was looking leaner than he ever has. The flecks of grey were absent and overall he was less weighed down than he usually does.
As captain in two formats, he remains a big presence. It is still impossible to spend any time in India and escape without having come across Dhoni, on a billboard, on your TV, on air, in the papers, in discussions.
A London School of Marketing report last July still found him more marketable than Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
But the hold he had over Indian cricket has broken. India has entered the age of Virat Kohli, of that there is no doubt. It is Kohli’s teams that Dhoni returns to when he takes up the captaincy again. There is such urgency to Kohli’s ambitions that it seems inevitable that he will be ODI and T20 captain sooner rather than later.
So in light of Kohli’s rise, what remains the point of Dhoni’s captaincy? The World Twenty20 in March is an obvious landmark.
Winning it, in India, will complete a full circle of his captaincy – it was winning this tournament back in 2007 that announced the arrival of Dhoni the captain. He has since won everything that is worth winning, so what is left?
Inevitably, he was asked about his future plans and equally inevitably, he did not really answer. “You won’t get answers regarding the future that’s too far ahead.
“As of now the Australia series is important and after that once we get in T20 groove we need to move in one direction as to what we need to do as a team so as to have the best chance of winning the World Twenty20. So those are the primary concerns as of now.”
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India might not play any 50-over cricket after this series until after the IPL. That is the format, above all others, that has made Dhoni’s legend, as captain and batsman. It is there that questions about his batting and leadership have grown over the last year.
His batting has not dipped drastically, not by numbers anyway – his average for the last year, a more-than-respectable 45.71, was his lowest for a year since 2007. But its sting has been doused, the toll of advancing years evident in his dwindling ability to generate the kind of explosion he was so famously capable of at the end of an innings.
He has also been accused of confusion and indecision over India’s best batting order. In his pomp, his captaincy and decision-making stood out precisely for the absence of confusion and indecision. His plans and ideas did not always work, but he was clear-headed about the thinking behind them.
“I am somebody who has always believed in the present,” he said at that news conference.
It is true – he has never been a long-term planner. Just that the present looks like it is running out.
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
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