Dhoni finally fails to land knockout punch
Just outside the Bullring mall in Birmingham there is a boxing equipment store
called The Gloves. One of the most eye-catching items on sale is a T-shirt that says, "Don't
box ugly people. They have nothing to lose." MS Dhoni has made a career being that ugly
man. He takes hopeless situations, sometimes turning fair situations into hopeless ones,
but somehow keeps answering those calls of 10, then reduces a game down to one man -
him - against the bowler bowling the last over, and backs himself in that one-on-one
contest. Rare are instances when he loses these one-on-ones.
The ultimate finisher stuttered on Sunday. Dhoni might still be the ugly boxer, but
he no longer has nothing to lose. He is possibly the best finisher limited-overs cricket has
ever seen. When he turns down three singles in the last seven balls and takes a suicidal
second - he all but sacrificed Ambati Rayudu - to keep the strike, with a specialist batsman
for company, and India lose by three runs, questions will be asked. He has in effect not
trusted Rayudu, who scored two half-centuries in the ODIs, to turn over the strike with six
and three balls to go. Any other batsman would have taken at least the first two of those
singles, but we are talking about Dhoni here.
To debate whether it was selfish of Dhoni - wanting the spotlight of having won it
himself - or too much self-belief, it is important to look at Dhoni's method once again.
Dhoni is so confident of his six-hitting skills he doesn't mind chasing 15, 16, 17 in one over.
In the final of a ODI triangular series in the West Indies last year, he turned 19 off 18 into 15
off 6 because he had Ishant Sharma for company, and then preyed on Shaminda Eranga.
When you are batting out there, cricket is an 11-on-two game.
Dhoni believes in reducing it to him against the bowler, as he likes to say, when
the pressure on him and the bowler is the same. So here he was okay with not taking the
single off the last ball of the 19th over, because he felt the pressure was the same on him
and Chris Woakes. more >>
No comments