Even before the ball has reached the willow, Dhoni has already read the batsman's switch from the front foot to the back foot and in a flash of a second, almost like a martial art expert, kicked out his right leg and stopped the ball dead in its tracks - shades of his days as a school team goalkeeper. MS Dhoni’s beautiful "leg-flick cum block" went viral on social media during the 2016 IPL and the world, as usual, went gaga over the brilliance of MS “lightning quick” Dhoni. It was one of the many instances that MS Dhoni decided to pull the rabbit out of the hat to give his fans the primal joy. Even though, THAT maneuver left his fans with yet another Dhoni tale to tell, it was the technical nuance of the effort that caught the eye of experts. 

If you clearly observe the video, it was evident that Dhoni started moving his leg way before Sharma’s ball had even reached Vohra, which means he had anticipated precisely the shot Vohra was going to play from the Punjab opener’s body position. The former Indian skipper kept his body constant while extending his legs. The interesting thing about the technique was that even though his body was extended to the extreme, his hands were exactly where they needed to be. It was a revealing aspect of Dhoni’s keeping as he made sure that if, Vohra decided not to hit the ball to gully, or got a thin edge, he would still be in trouble, even when Dhoni had a leg in the air. So, by creating the angle with his extended foot, Dhoni managed to double his reach while having both his hands and legs in perfect positions to stop the ball, almost like a right angle triangle. Think of it in a normal sense and then put all your extraordinary analytical power to judge the situation. You will have to accept that this was an extraordinary maneuverer or as India’s fielding coach R Sridhar, then simply explained that as, “That’s the Mahi way, and it’s one step ahead of the regular wicket-keeping manual.”

So, what has made him, in the words of Michael Slater, “the fastest gloves in the west”, a phenomenon, is a pretty difficult one to decode. His technique defied the very fundamental of earth’s existence – Newton’s laws of motion that we all had studied during our schooling, which pertains to the behavior of objects for which all existing forces are not balanced.

The law states, “The acceleration of an object is dependent upon two variables - the net force acting upon the object and the mass of the object. The acceleration of an object depends directly upon the net force acting upon the object, and inversely upon the mass of the object. As the force acting upon an object is increased, the acceleration of the object is increased. As the mass of an object is increased, the acceleration of the object is decreased.”

The trait helps him increase the time to slow down the ball and by then, his hands are already close to the stumps. So, Dhoni remains successful in striking the stumps at the right time, instead of covering the entire distance. Take the stumping off Sabbir Rahman in the World T20 match against Bangladesh to the count. Not only was he quick in collecting the ball down leg and bringing it back but he timed it perfectly just when Rahman’s leg rose from the crease. This was the case of pure instinct as much was the game awareness. Another example of Dhoni’s pure class was that he even managed to whip off the bails in a flash to dismiss Ricky Ponting in 2007 and the bowler was Irfan Pathan, who used to clock 138kmph easily back then. 

Although his leadership and supreme ability to finish off the games from any precarious situations contributed to his cult status, his safe pair of gloves and lightening quick stumpings also personified his legacy. And the 100th ODI stumpings is just the mere affirmation of that the Mahi way is unique and not easy to emulate.