The Indian captain, MS Dhoni, says that the experience of leading his team out at Lord’s on Thursday will be an honour to rank with anything he has achieved in his glorious career.
“It’s obviously big, leading 15 people who have the expectation of 1.2 billion,” Dhoni said, in a rare and exclusive interview with Telegraph Sport. “It’s an honour, it’s very special. But at the same time it’s an added responsibility. You want the Indian team to win each and every game, which is not possible. Still, that’s what you are expected to do.”
Is there a more impressive man in world cricket? England captain Andrew Strauss describes himself as a winner, but for all the kudos of his three Ashes triumphs, the man on the other side of Thursday’s coin toss has done it all: World Cup, World Twenty20, World No 1 in Test cricket. And he has done it with such serenity and poise that you would think he was still playing in a tape-ball street game back in his native town of Ranchi.
This is one of Dhoni’s greatest talents: the ability to transmit calm and relaxation to his players when things are tight. Yet it is something of a conjurer’s trick, for he is keenly aware of the responsibility he carries. Indeed, he himself sometimes feels the need to escape from the pressures of fame climbing aboard one of his 25 beloved motorbikes. “If get the chance,” he says, “somewhere in Delhi or Mumbai I will take my bike out, take the helmet with me and go around for a ride.”
The face that launched a million billboards, Dhoni enjoys the trappings of success, and deservedly so. At the same time, though, he remains rooted in the simple work ethic of his family, who hail from the economically underprivileged state of Jharkhand. In as much as he has a home at all – rather than a nomadic existence on the team bus - he continues to live in the family house in Ranchi along with his parents and his brother Narendra.
“Since 2005, I have not spent much time with my family,” he said, thinking back to the year of his Test debut against Sri Lanka. “In fact I have spent more time at the Taj Landsend in Mumbai. It was my 100th visit recently, which means I have spent more than 400 days in that hotel, and that is a lot more than I have spent with my family.
“People say, ‘Why are you not hitting those big sixes?’ Often I joke that I’m getting old and I don’t have the strength. But time has changed. Now it’s all about the requirement of the game, if the situation doesn’t require me to hit sixes, why should I? It’s the singles and doubles which really excite me now.
Dhoni’s six quotient has certainly dropped in recent years, but there was one recent instance that no cricket lover will easily forget. With this year’s World Cup final in the balance, and India looking vulnerable at 114 for three, he sent himself in and took control of the situation in a 109-run partnership with Gautam Gambhir. It ended emphatically, when he picked up a ball from Nuwan Kulasekara and sent it back over the sightscreen just like the old Dhoni.
“It was instinct rather than a plan,” he explains now, “but I did say to myself if it is in the right area, I will go for the big shot. I hadn’t flowed during the Cup, but form is something that goes in one or two innings and comes back in five to 15 deliveries. It’s the state of mind that is important. I’m glad I promoted myself, because it gave me the chance to do something special for the country.” Which is what Mahendra Singh Dhoni is all about.
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