MS Dhoni and another possibly heart-breaking farewell

May 18, 2024, M Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru, MS Dhoni and his Chennai Super Kings (CSK) find themselves in all sorts of strife after 35 overs of cricket. They need 90 to win, and 72 to somehow scrape through into the playoffs.

The crowd, after the flurry of wickets, has found its voice, and the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) have all the momentum possible. But there is still an uneasiness among their fans. Mostly because they have seen Dhoni doing Dhoni things at the venue.

Ravindra Jadeja, stood at the other end, is one of the major reasons CSK are defending champions, and if any pair can deny RCB and their fans what they desire, it is this pair.

Dhoni starts ticking along from the moment he walks out, but cannot clear the fence early. Jadeja, though, takes up that mantle and his six off the last ball of Lockie Ferguson’s penultimate over brings the equation down to 17 runs needed off six balls. Tough but gettable.

Yash Dayal is entrusted to bowl the final over. Dhoni is on strike. The atmosphere is edgy, but the veteran seems unfazed. He has seen such situations countless times in his career. This is what he usually wants. A one-versus-one contest against the bowler, where the first to blink is generally the first to lose.

The opening ball of the over is on the body, and it is just what the wicketkeeper-batter is looking for. The bruising forearms snap into action, the hips swivel, the bat swings like a gladiatorial weapon and the ball goes soaring above the Chinnaswamy roof. A 110-metre six by a 42-year-old, who many feel should have retired years ago, when 17 were required off six.

The pressure is now firmly on the bowler. Dhoni has him right where he wants him. Dayal runs up to bowl. Those with a CSK allegiance, wait in anticipation. Those in red and blue, saying every prayer they know. And then…

***

July 10, 2019, Manchester. India, in a knockout game, are under the pump. Their top order comprising KL Rahul, Rohit Sharma, and Virat Kohli, has failed. Dinesh Karthik has fallen too, as have Hardik Pandya and Rishabh Pant.

Indian fans, though, still retain hope. And no prizes for guessing why that is the case.

Dhoni is still out there, and as long as he is there at the crease, anything and everything can happen. He has his trusted lieutenant Jadeja alongside him too, and the latter is in the midst of his greatest international innings yet.

Jadeja, though, perishes just as the 48th over is drawing to a close. An attempted big shot goes awry, and the ball goes only as far as mid off. There is despair in the Indian camp and among those in blue at Old Trafford. The batter who was striking the ball most fluently, will not be there to take them past the line.

But there is still hope.

When Ferguson hurls down the first ball of the 49th over, that hope quickly metamorphoses into tangible optimism. It is short outside off and Dhoni, using his wrists and his bat speed, carves it over the deep point fence. A shot of authority. A shot to signal the game is far from done.

And then, a couple of balls later…

***

Most of you reading will know what happens next in both situations. For the uninitiated, though, here is more context.

MS Dhoni's dismissal was the turning point

After Dhoni sends the ball into the Bengaluru stratosphere, he gets dismissed off the very next ball, trying to recreate a similar result. And in Manchester, he gets run out by the barest of margins, courtesy a rocket throw by Martin Guptill.

In both scenarios, his team, in the hunt while he was at the crease, stumble and fail to cross the finish line. That was the last time Dhoni played for India, and Saturday could be the last time he ends up playing for CSK too.

***

Dhoni has never been good with hellos and goodbyes. Run-outs, ducks, coming-so-close-yet-being-so-far – he has lived a rollercoaster in just his first and last appearances for teams across formats. What has endeared him to millions (possibly billions), though, is all that he has done between those two moments.

Dhoni, since the time he started, has had that special connection with the fans, which likely stems from how people relate so closely to him. Being from a small town without much cricketing background, he was not supposed to rule the world the way he did. That he did, made people think they could too, just because he could.

Ask any CSK fan, and chances are their favourite MSD quality would be belief. Belief that anything and everything is possible, not just on the cricket field but also in life. That as long as he was there at the crease, the game was not done, and that he could, in very real circumstances, conjure a fairy tale ending out of nothing, making it seem as if that was the destined outcome all along.

That was indeed the case on Saturday in Bengaluru and in Manchester five years ago. Neither of those got the fairy tale ending it deserved, or the conclusion Dhoni had mapped out in his head, which again reiterates that sport (and cricket) can be cruel, even to one of its greatest minds and one of its truly defining characters.

But then again, if you have watched Dhoni closely, it was never really about the result. In a result-driven, cut-throat environment, it was about everything that preceded it, which, in turn, led to all of those amazing results. An almost supernatural trait to have.

The 42-year-old did portray that he was human in Bengaluru on Saturday, though. Not because he had failed, but because he finally seemed to show emotion. That almost clenched fist, the dejected punching of the bat, the crestfallen walk back to the pavilion, and a sinking feeling of being overwhelmed by the impending result.

Moments later, as the RCB players ran wild in their celebrations, joined by the raucous crowd, Dhoni seemed to have a quick word with his captain and then a couple of his coaches, only to then disappear in the distance. Quietly.

Was it the fairy tale ending he deserved, after all those years of magic and making people believe in fairy tale endings in the first place? Definitely not. But maybe it was just meant to be this way. Like his last-over sixes, back-to-the-wall knocks – a perk you get with Dhoni.

But the last image is often not the lasting image in his case, telling you all you need to know about a cricketer who provided unadulterated and unbridled joy whenever he just strode out, and whose aura and charisma might not be replaced. Ever.

If that came at the cost of heart-breaking farewells, so be it.