An open letter to MS Dhoni, on his first show of emotion as India captain

MS Dhoni walks back to the pavilion during the 2015 World Cup

Dear MSD,

As I watched you face the media after the recent series defeat to Bangladesh, tears stung my eyes. The questions hurled at you were venomous and hostile. For the first time in your life, you did not manage to look unruffled. As an ardent admirer of yours, it was painful for me to see the mask of nonchalance which had become one with your skin fall off, to reveal the hurt and indignation that lie beneath.

That indignation is very real, but so silently had you carried the burden for so many years now that the mask had become your face. So much so that it is now frightful to meet the face that lies beneath. It is one of those faces that is folded up, locked in the cupboard and conveniently forgotten. Long disuse rusts such a countenance and makes it strangely uncanny.

No one can generally read thoughts or emotions on your face. That is where your greatness lies.

We have always been a cricket-crazy nation, with our celebrations bordering on the carnivalesque. A bare-bodied captain swinging his shirt from the Lord's balcony reflects and vindicates our desires as a nation. Your deadpan nonchalance after a series win instead left the country tearing its head out in confusion. The antithesis truly could not have been greater.

But that is how you have always been. Your grave nonchalance after the CB series win in Australia in 2008 left even the commentators confused. Feisty with a calmness, vindictive with a nonchalance – therein lies your greatest strength. Calmness of temperament is usually the key to the clarity of your vision.

You have offered to accept all responsibilities and step down as a captain if that would take Indian cricket forward.

A lot has been said and written about you in the recent past. Speculations is rife about a rift in the dressing room. Bishan Singh Bedi has advised you to practise yoga to regain your composure. I can't say if such comments have been made in earnest or jest. But some critics seemed to have made a career out of criticising you.

Controversies have never deserted you. The spot-fixing scandal in 2013 seemed to have cast a pall of gloom over your career. But international stardom always comes at a price. An inadvertent mid-crease collision becomes international news now just because you are involved in it. Every smile, every frown and every shrug of the shoulders is fodder for public introspection and opinion.

We had needed but lacked a player like you for ages! We did not have a wicket-keeper who could bat well, so much so that Rahul Dravid had to wear the gloves for a long time. We admired Adam Gilchrist and wondered if we could ever have a wicket-keeper batsman like him. We gaped in awe at Michael Bevan's achievements and wished that we could have a finisher like him.

That we would have someone soon who could play both the roles to utter perfection was a proposition we would have willfully dismissed back then!

Your match-winning knock of 183 against Sri Lanka back in 2005 will never be forgotten. Flailing away with cuts, hooks and helicopter shots, you seemed to be a superhero wielding a weapon of mass destruction. With brute force and long hair, you soon became the poster boy of Indian cricket.

Drinking milk became fashionable again. Teenagers stopped trimming their hair. Whatever you did, the nation seemed to follow.

Yet, you reined in your temperament and changed your style completely when the team needed you to. The long hair was gone. The blind heaves over mid-wicket became infrequent. The helicopter shot was shelved, only to be brought out in the dying overs.

Instead, you became the silent assassin. With deft touches and streaky boundaries, you could knock off required rates almost unnoticed.

When you won us the T20 championship in 2007, you taught the entire nation to dream again. But they called you a gambler, destiny's child instead! Who else in his right mind would throw the ball to Joginder Sharma for the last over?

Your technique is inadequate, they said. But an average of 52.17 for someone who bats at number six is enviable to say the least. They believe you are a poor wicketkeeper as well. When you dismiss Soumya Sarkar with an impossible catch, plucking the ball out of thin air, you play it down as a 'fluke'. The joke is lost on them.

If numbers are to be believed, you are the third most successful captain now after Ricky Ponting and Clive Lloyd. From you, the world has learnt the art of remaining unflustered under pressure and graceful in defeat. How many matches have you won for India when you were the last man standing? I have lost count.

Under pressure, your brain seems to function like a supercomputer crunching numbers, making calculations simultaneously as you chase down targets.

Your six over long on that won us the World Cup after a period of 28 years has written your name in the books of posterity. There is nothing left for you to achieve. Yet there's no reason to think that this should be the end.

Men like you are born leaders and should continue to captain the side as long as they play. Experience aided by astuteness can only make you a better leader in the last few years of your international career.

But not everything is in your hands at the moment. You have been around long enough to know that there comes a time when clouds begin to gather and the gods themselves contrive to overthrow men. The winds are not in your favour and every move you choose to make must be carefully thought out.

I refuse to believe that losing your cool in that press conference that day was an unconscious act of letting your guard down. That is unthinkable for a man who has mastered the art of strategic gambling, a man who never makes a move without a purpose.

I would like to believe that it was a subtle masterstroke.

Regards,

An ardent fan and cricket-lover