MS Dhoni has spoiled Indian cricket fans and how

That was my first peek, the first impression of the man, who, by then, had become a charm, an enigma and an icon of the franchise, Chennai Super Kings. It is not very often that Chennai is so welcoming in terms of putting a player from another state on the posters across the city, with the exception of Sachin Tendulkar. The city was filled with so many posters that on my way to the stadium, I was equally pumped up to witness the man, the myth and the sensation. 

Batting first, Murali Vijay and Mathew Hayden did their part but more importantly, the duo of Suresh Raina and MS Dhoni put on a show. On a slow and sluggish wicket, the right-hander walked away scoring 31 runs off 18 balls, with four boundaries, smacking it across the ground. Later in the season, as a finisher, the wicketkeeper tonked the ball over the ground to complete games for the franchise and as a youngster, I decided to emulate it myself. 

In a school game, in the most tedious of situations, three runs were needed off one delivery. A sane kid would have hit the ball to the deep and would have tried to get the two required for a draw. Having watched the CSK man earlier, I wasn’t of the same school of thought, as the plan was simple - a tonk down the ground for a boundary to finish it off in style and walk away grabbing the stump. Just like that, the man from Jharkhand had an immediate impact on my thinking and the notion of how pretty a win must be, to finish it off with a boundary. I was sold out, and just like me in 2010, Indian cricket fans too are now sold out in 2020. 

That is the charisma of the guy who, alongside being flamboyant and unorthodox, knew how to plan everything to the minutest of details like he had a device attached to him. Right from the toss, there was a certain aura that was built around this winning personality and it was given that he would come out tossing the coin the right way. The expression always was stone-cold, as even the slightest of emotions might give it away to the opposition. 

If India were batting first indeed, the now 39-year-old exactly knew what he wanted, what was the total required as per the conditions and read the game like it was written for him. In the World Cup, that decision to step up ahead of Yuvraj Singh to prevent him being exposed under pressure is sort of the thing that a skipper does. It has clearly left a long-lasting impression, as the fans now want the skipper to do that, increasing the pressure on Virat Kohli. In the first of its kind, he knew what he wanted from the team with his impressive running between the wickets. 

Even at the age of 38, Kohli could blindly trust the veteran to complete a double, wherein he couldn’t trust youngsters to do the same. Also, he had a vision for talents, a unique pair of eyes that could filter out talents like it was some sort of programmed code, which functioned at the press of a button. It is only safe to say that, somewhere in between those codes of input and output, there were names of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli. More than just these, with the Jharkhand man at the crease, you know that nine out of ten games would go down till the death end of the game and, more or less, they would end in India winning. During that ‘India struggling period’ to ‘India managed to win the match easily’, there was a tangling presence of the man, who knew the end of the game before the fans. 

On top of that, if you have kept a keen eye on his career, he finishes games off with a six, not a towering one every time. Just after that, he grabs the stump and walks off in style, with not even a smile on his face. Ever since he last played in 2019, Indian fans have waited for the longest time to experience that feeling, of a game finished in style. So much so that, as a tribute, ICC did away with the old wooden stumps so that none of the new-age batsmen could do the same. There would no more a Ravi Shastri, who would yell ‘Dhoni finishes off in style,’ and never would India win a World Cup in such fashion. No more the chants of ‘Dhoni, Dhoni, Dhoni’ in the crowd and no more the feeling of an invincible Indian side. 

More obviously, at just 175cm in height, the right-hander had a unique element in his wicket keeping arsenal - the dives and the sharp-work. If ever they counted the speed of lightning with the sound, there would be the CSK keeper’s stumpings in between them. Not to forget his instructions from behind the stumps, the effect that it has on the psyche of the bowlers, who have all been awestruck since the man walked away. Kuldeep Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja and Yuzvendra Chahal are just some of the bowlers who credited the man behind the stumps but his impact is even more than that. Have you ever thought about this - from where did Indian fans, who rejected the idea of having DRS, go from that to ‘oh we are the best with DRS?’ 

It's that phase, where every Indian cricketing fan has been spoilt by the rich-glory and the intelligence behind the stumps. It certainly has a long-lasting effect on expectations from the fans, if you want more, ask KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant. The bars have been raised to that level where it’s impossible for the new-age keepers to match it, leave alone cross the threshold. His simple activities behind the stumps, be it sending the fielder a yard or two away from where he was in the previous delivery to freshening them up are just some small things that go unnoticed. 

Rightly, Shastri called him the fastest pickpocketer, such was his pace and technique behind the stumps. Ever since, keepers have just been compared and criticised. Leave you and me, normal cricket-watching fans, even the cricketers have been spoilt by such standards. Hands down, the 39-year-old is the best man-manager ever in India’s cricketing history. Every minute detail has been noted by me but is engraved in your brain, more importantly, has side-pathed traditionalist ideology in the country’s cricketing history. 

Players have long moved on from playing traditional cricket, with a straight bat to being more effective and innovative like Dhoni, who had the sheer power to possess such charisma. Just ask yourselves this one question, it is enough to leave you all thinking for at least a week - how much has Dhoni spoilt you ever since you started watching cricket? The answer for some might be a heavy one, for the others lighter but as it stands, it has clearly spoilt the Indian cricket fans. So for a guy at the age of 12, it was quite normal to think that he could finish off games like MS Dhoni but could I? No, I could only get a couple and such has been his impression on every Indian fan, to the clear extent to say - he has spoilt em’ all.