His predecessor Sourav Ganguly took India closer to winning its second ICC Cricket World Cup in 2003. Eight years later, in 2011, Mahendra Singh (MS) Dhoni led the team that brought home India’s second ICC Cricket World Cup, at home in Wankhede. In 2020, with less than a year to go to mark the decade of that win, Dhoni announced his retirement from the game.
Like his eventful entry into the national team, it came as a surprise via a post on his official Instagram page. “Thanks a lot for your love and support throughout. From 1929 hrs consider me as retired,” he posted along with a small music video of his playing days.
Dhoni’s form – with the bat – hadn’t been what it was and he hadn’t been part of the national side for a while which, in turn, fuelled speculations that his time was up. However, whether or not his days of playing for the Indian team had ended, the cricketing world will never know thanks to him pre-empting these rumours from fanning further. At the same time, in choosing to end his career for the national side on his terms – at a time he thought was convenient – Dhoni has left the game in the same manner as he made his way in: unexpectedly.
In the past 20 years, the Indian team has had eclectic hues of personality in its captain. Ganguly blended aggression tempered with determination to bring the country out of the despondency that the match-fixing blot was, to usher in the 2000s. Rahul Dravid became the team’s anchor stabilising it before the choppiness of its fortunes could threaten to overturn its efforts. And now, Virat Kohli has made the team his own by adding audaciousness to its existing insouciance. The latter trait is the legacy of Dhoni’s skippering.
Known for holding his cards close to his chest and for his inscrutableness, Dhoni as the captain not only backed his teammates as much as himself for every quirkily-seeming decision he had taken. The wins vouched for his calls while the losses were gauged as learning lessons. Regardless of how the team’s result came about though, it was aweing to watch him recast the team according to his specifications. It was as if he were using new-fangledness as the template to design the present – his – era of the team.
Over the years, ironically, this template of Dhoni’s, too, became rusty with time. The ideas that had seemed inspiring had started to be viewed as one-dimensional and visage of ambivalence became harder to look at. The man who used to come in and hit freely-swinging hits had become subsumed by the leader whose every turn with the bat looked awkward and heavy.
His wicket-keeping chops still remained unhindered but after a long while, India’s cricketing disquiet did not stem for want for a full-time and competent wicket-keeper but for lack of a batsman whose batting could be relied upon constantly. In this, too, there was an emergence of irony.
A couple of Dhoni’s teammates including his fellow 2011 World Cup-winning colleagues – Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir – had seen their playing days get overcast by form-related aspersions and had faced the retirement juggernaut before deciding – or as much as they had been allowed – to leave it all. But even as Dhoni was dragged into controversies surrounding these side-linings, his adherence to remain unspeaking kept up the shroud of enigma around him.
Dhoni leaves the sport as a 39-year-old with a 16-year career behind him. His cricketing skills gathered across these years had, have and will be analysed and dissected either to be learnt from or to be improved upon. Nonetheless, in this decade-and-a-half, with the cricketing world barely managing to understand the persona he was on and off the field, what will endure the longest about Dhoni is the facet of mysteriousness surrounding him, even at the time of retirement.
