MS Dhoni is still a great finisher but he needs support from the other end

By Chetan Narula
In the humid Sri Lankan heat of September 2017, Ravi Shastri was in Colombo discussing how he saw the Indian team developing over the next couple years. A discussion that also touched MS Dhoni. “By no stretch of the imagination, is he finished or even halffinished.

If anyone thinks so, they are mistaken,” Shastri said.

This conversation happened days after Dhoni dug deep in the second ODI at Palleke l e, and in Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s company, took India to victory from a precarious 121/6. He scored 45 not out, and his ensuing knocks on the Lankan tour were unbeaten scores of 67 and 49. A month later, he rescued the team again with a 79 at Chennai as India fought back to win from 87/5.

Dhoni was then averaging 80.66 in 18 ODIs (484 runs, 4 half-centuries) against West Indies, Sri Lanka, Australia and New Zealand (in 2017). Statistically this was among his best runs as an ODI batsman.

The big downside for Indian cricketers is that even in success there are detractors. And while Dhoni was on a spree in ODIs, his T20I form was indifferent. In 7 matches against the same teams, he managed just 72 runs. Extend it to the entire season, including Lanka’s return series and the South African trip, and Dhoni has scored 235 runs in 13 T20Is in 2017-18.

It was enough for some to call an end to his T20I career, especially with Rishabh Pant and Sanju Samson waiting in the wings. It didn’t matter that he was not batting higher up than number five. The average fan is distant from realities of the dressing room, as Shastri said.

The Indian team management’s plans for Dhoni is clear. In the build-up to 2019, they do not differentiate between ODIs and T20Is, u s i n g b o t h white-ball formats to experiment as many options.

But what does all of this have to do with the Indian Premier League? Well, no Indian cricketer can presume to take things for granted, least of all a 36-year-old. So, on a day when Samson dispatched Bengaluru, Dhoni came up with a trademark knock that turned the clock back. He nearly won it.

That word — nearly — is important.

Needing 85 off 36 balls against Punjab, Dhoni took Chennai as close as possible. There are two ways to look at it. To most Dhoni is the evergreen hero who can still do the impossible and to others he has lost the art of finishing.

‘The Dhoni of old wouldn’t have promoted Ravindra Jadeja over Dwayne Bravo’, critics would say. Or that ‘the Dhoni of old wouldn’t have let Mohit Sharma get on top in that final over’. And that ‘the Dhoni of old would have finished this, period’.

Reality lies somewhere in the middle.

At Mohali, Ravichandran Ashwin pulled out all the stops to stun his former side. In a game of many surprises — Chris Gayle’s storm for example, there was one man who stood unwavering. As he has admitted himself, Dhoni took his time to get going — scoring only 23 off the first 20 balls he faced. The asking rate was 12.85.

But the next 24 balls Dhoni faced yielded 56 runs. The colour faded from Preity Zinta’s face as the hits disappeared for sixes in the Mohali night sky.

While he couldn’t finish Sunday’s game, it is not because he has become a worse version of his past glorious self. You cannot do such a job alone, not all the time. Today Dhoni is at that delicate stage in his career when he can do enough to get you close to the finishing line.

But he needs crucial support from the other end. It isn’t surprising because this is a natural progression for a batsman like him — with age, a workhorse’s ethics takes precedence over power-hitting. In turn, it highlights the significance of the likes of Hardik Pandya, Dinesh Karthik and even Manish Pandey, any of those who want to grow into this finishing role for team India.


Over the course of the next 12 months, they must learn to bridge this gap to victory in partnership with a Dhoni at the other end. But for Chennai, the time frame is much shorter.