Monday 16 / September / 2024
After failing to dispatch the ball to the rope to score four runs that would have handed India a cool win and put a pleasing coat of fresh glow to his depleting reputation as an awesome finisher, MS Dhoni described the ball he managed to send straight to deep point for an inconsequential single as “brilliant”. Was it really?
Anyone who watched the game, or at least the last over, would only be puzzled about the touch of brilliance the Indian skipper would love to lend to that delivery full and wide outside off stump. The truth is that there was only a method, but not a lot of brilliance, executed well by Neville Madziva and completely missed by Dhoni, perhaps due to a total lack of spot-on brilliance needed to outwit the bowler.
India went into the last over of the match with just five wickets down, needing only eight runs for a victory that looked like just about to happen. Dhoni, who arrived at the crease in the 13th over and knocked the ball around to score 16 runs to get his feet and eyes in synch with the situation, was on strike. At the other end was a piping hot Axar Patel with two sixes and a four off just nine balls in his account.
The picture was perfect and familiar to the Indian fans, and the mystery, if any, was about how Dhoni was going to do it: was he going to settle the issue off the first two balls or was he ready to leave it all to the last ball?
The first ball produced a single. Patel was out off the second ball. And we thought that was no problem because it was Dhoni, who had crossed, who would take the strike, and not the new man Rishi Dhawan. What followed was an honest admission of the falling powers of the once-mighty finisher.
The Indian skipper hurried for a single off the third ball to reduce the target to just 6 more runs — and that was a loud statement about the waning confidence of the master finisher. There was nothing brilliant about trusting your No. 8 mate, a bowler who was making his T20 international debut, to steal a quick single and give the strike back. Worse, Dhawan had a different view of the plot as he walked across to finish the game and failed to put bat to ball, twice.
When we thought the worst was about to happen, Dhawan handed the baton back to Dhoni. And then the worst we weren’t quite ready to take in happened as Dhoni failed to get a hint of the method put in place by Madziva.
Right from ball one, which Dhoni hit to long-off for a single, to the last, except the second ball that claimed the wicket of Patel, Madziva’s method was simple as he tried to land the ball full and wide outside off stump. How Dhoni failed to read the game-plan of the bowler is a matter of depleting brilliance of the famed finisher who has grown gracelessly old.
If the brilliance take made us rack our brains for inspiration, the threat part of Dhonispeak would put a wry smile on our lips. Obviously, there’s no need for India to bother much about the defeat or worry over their prospects in the remaining two games, but that’s not because of what the Indian skipper has threatened to do: bringing back the main fast bowlers. He has no Mitchell Starcs at his disposal. Elton Chigumbura has taken many a battle to the best bowlers around the world to figure among one of the only four international batsmen to score 500 or more runs in T20 internationals at a 150-plus strike rate. He’s unlikely to wet his pants at a mere mention of the names of Barinder Sran and Dhawal Kulkarni.
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The writer is a freelance contributor based in India. All the views and opinions expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not reflect those of Times of Oman
