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I am not a writer. In fact, I write code for a living. For some, I am pretty average at writing code. So bear with me. This will be a long monologue(my attempt at a tribute) about one of the most intriguing man in cricket, Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
For anyone who knows me, they would probably describe me as an old soul trapped in young(not so anymore) body. I am a purist as far as my cricket is concerned. I am someone who will wake up at 3 am in the morning to watch test cricket. I am not particularly a fan of shorter forms of cricket. For me test cricket is right up there. It's hard, it's relentless and it's the true test of skill and the mind. It should not come as a surprise that my favourite cricketer is Rahul Dravid. Close second is Sachin Tendulkar and then there are the rest.
So it should come as great surprise that a purist like me is writing something about M.S Dhoni who is at best a slightly above average test cricketer. In fact, I am myself surprised that Dhoni's retirement has affected me so much(may be it's just that I don't want to write perf).
I think part of the reason why I am writing this is what he has achieved as a cricketer and as a captain. It's often said that a leader is as good as his team. Richie Benaud once said that captaincy is 10% skill and 90% luck. For me Dhoni gets a 10/10 for his skill. I honestly think that he had worst test team(among Ganguly, Dhoni and Kohli) after Kumble retired. He didn't have Kumble or harbhajan at their peak. He didn't have Srinath or zaheer at their peaks either. He didn't have a side that could take 20 wickets. So a lot of times his captaincy was just about waiting and playing a game of attrition. And despite all that he helped India become the top ranked test team. He was an slightly above average test cricketer. I think we as Indians were just happy that we had someone who we could compare with Adam Gilchrist who is imho one of the best test cricketers in my era. His 200 odd against Australia was one of the finest innings that I have seen. His 140 odd against Pakistan was a close second. But those were few and far in between. But where I think his greatest strength lie was in One day cricket. There he didn't have to take 10 wickets to win a match. Here he could always outscore the opponents. This is the format where we saw his true skills and genius as a captain. He could inspire average cricketers to win World cups. Here he was like a poker player. He knew what his strengths were. He knew his cards and he played his moves absolutely right. I think a leader is some one who can inspire the team to be greater than the some of his parts. And Dhoni was the best at it. He made the team look better than it really was.
However, Dhoni is much bigger than the numbers he produced as a batsmen or as a captain. It was his aura. His press conferences laid a lot of emphasis on the process. He always said that my job is to setup a process and have everyone follow that process and detach from the end results. Having myself recently moved to a leadership role, I find that incredibly hard to do. He was a master at it. If I had to describe Dhoni in one word it would "Detached". Make no mistake, it didn't mean he didn't care about the result. He did. It just means he was able to see the larger picture and not be bogged down by the end result. That is incredibly hard to do as a leader. Especially when everyone is judging you on the results and its your ass on the line. His insights helped me a lot during my engineering days. I was getting rejected for internship by companies left right and centre in my third year. After some introspection, I realised that I was too focused on the result. By the time I graduated from the college I was able to follow Dhoni's policy and I did well. Since then I have lost sight of this principle multiple times both as an individual and a lead and I am just an okay engineer at a above average company. He is the bloody captain of the Indian cricket team. The toughest job in cricket. That's where I think his true genius lies. Cricket has made him who is is. Yet, he is as detached from it as he possibly can be. In a country that is enamored by centre stage, this guy doesn't care about it at all. He won us that final against Sri Lanka. Yet he was happy in taking the back stage and let it all be about sachin and yuvraj and others. I have never even once take him centre stage. His press conferences were an example. Whenever India won he would send out the man of the match or some other person for the press conferences. When the team lost he would be the one answeing all the questions. You can see an example of this in the way he announced his retirement as well. A cryptic post on instagram and he walked away just like that. And that is perhaps why I am writing this piece. I aspire to be the kind of leader he was and I know if I could be even 0.1% as good as he was, I would have done well.
Dhoni is an enigma. He is the best leader I have seen in my life. His contribution to the Indian cricket is beyond anything that has ever been done. Thank you dhoni for everything and thank you for showing how to lead. Something that this country desperately needs right now.
"Na aap pal do pal ke shayar hain,
Na pal do pal apki kahani hai,
Na pal do pal ki hasti hai,
Na pal do pal ki jawani hai"
