A niece in Mumbai is in tears; the techie in Hyderabad is shocked; our temple priest is distraught; in Lucknow, a rickshaw-puller’s heart is unbearably heavy; and countless Chennaites are unable to accept that ‘Namma Dhoni’ has given up captaincy. Strange, because they ought to be familiar with Dhoni’s style—goodbye without notice or fanfare. Dhoni, one of a kind.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni relinquishes the captaincy with a cupboard overflowing with numerous awards and an adulation that the public has only showered on Kapil Dev and Sachin Tendulkar. The 2007 T20 World Cup, the 2011 ODI World Cup, the 2013 Champions Trophy, the ICC no. 1 ranking in Tests—they all came to India when Dhoni was captain.
Even at 26, when Dhoni won his first T20 World Cup, he was not at the forefront of celebrations but busy peeling off his jersey and giving it to a young boy. Few remember him stepping up to receive any of these trophies, but everyone recalls as though it were yesterday, that towering six to long on, the twirl of the bat, and an unhurried plucking of one stump as a souvenir.
Dhoni walked off the Wankhede pitch that night in 2011 as though it were just another day in office. As though he was completely unaware that he was bathed in glory. No surprise that as he grew older, he featured even less in the photo ops. That placidity and almost contemptuous disregard for whether the team had won or lost—that was no façade.
Everyone agrees he was an outstanding ODI and T20 captain, but some accuse him of being less interested as a Test captain. For us, that’s an unfair summary. As the editor of Wisden India told us, one must view Dhoni’s Test captaincy in two phases—before 2011 and after 2011.
Before 2011, he had the fabulous batting line-up of Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman along with bowlers, Zaheer and Harbhajan, at their peak. But post-2011, these players were on the wane; the fab four exited and Zaheer, Harbhajan and Sehwag were spent forces. Dhoni had to bide his time while India licked its wounds and rebuilt their team.
That is why the 2013 Champions Trophy in England must be considered one of his finest victories. It came after India had taken a series of knocks in Test cricket and a most unsavoury betting scandal in the IPL.
No one believed that India, a team in transition and its governance in turmoil, was a serious contender. But Dhoni and his team created magic, won every game, and India was almost perfection personified.
We close with something very dear to Dhoni—his respect and admiration for India’s armed forces. After all, when India retained their no. 1 Test ranking at Kolkata in February 2010, Dhoni gave his jersey to an officer of the Indian Army, a Shaurya Chakra winner. In that photo, you can see the Indian captain is prouder than the Army officer as the jersey exchanges hands.
Perhaps his proudest moment was the investiture ceremony when he was given the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Indian Territorial Army.
‘Cricketers like Dhoni come once in a century,’ says Gavaskar. That is no hyperbole.
Note: This is an excerpt from the revised and expanded edition of Mid-Wicket Tales: A Century and More of Cricket by S. Giridhar and V.J. Raghunath, published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2023.
This essay was written in January 2017