Just 70 days after the World Cup, when the media had put enough on the shoulders of our players, the Indian team was sent to Land of the British. The series had its own vigor involved due to the days of the year 1947 though none of the players existed then and I wonder if our coach Fletcher existed too. With injuries as close to Indian team as a first slip is to a wicket keeper on the field, a glimpse of the debacle was visible even before the start of the series. And as it turned out to be, Indians could not win a single game on the white soil and had to land here with their heads down. By this time, the media channels had spent considerable time in animation and graphics to sell(and not tell) it to the world how our team had performed and how lucky our men were to claim the world no. 1 position for some hours. Working in mergers and acquisitions were-I, You and we who had put ample doubts in Dhoni, if we really belonged to that league where a seal of Australians was put up for more than 10 years- World No. 1. He had become insolvent and every loan-giving company wanted to check his credibility.
MS Dhoni with the ICC World Cup Further, the fall in the TRP rating of the Champions League had given enough jitters to BCCI to show pink slips to players who were not performing. Harbhajan Singh, whose leadership and canny abilities in Mumbai Indians had put another drop in the ocean of Neeta Ambani’s treasury did not impress the selectors and had to be shown the exit door. Probably the time to learn “teesra” has arised.
By now the Englishmen had entered and there came the Parthivs,the Rahanes, and Umesh straight from the flight of domestic cricket. Playing on Indian soil for our players has always been like playing on their school grounds with their Principal sitting in the stands. They don’t mind tossing with a Sholay coin where the opposing team gets to win the toss. The same happened, and Alastair Cook chose to bowl first in the first ODI of the series. the critics staring into the screen might have accumulated sufficient content in 30 overs to entertain the people post match on media channels. But the skipper had tactfully read the script and played like a shepherd on the field. Soon the total put forward was adequate to beat England by the second highest margin ever.
Parthiv Patel and Ajinkya Rahane “What if Dhoni fails” became the headline of some newspapers by the next day. He wanted another 2 days time to prove that what had happened on the English soil 2 months back was a mere explanation of the fact-“all the possible things that could have gone wrong in the series went wrong”. The day came and Kohli and Gambhir took us to a comfortable victory in the Rajdhani of India.
By now, each player in the line up had shown their value except the openers. A daunting task of chasing 299 was set in Mohali. Anything close to 300 is always difficult even if you are playing with a tennis ball on the tar road. Our openers who had shown little expertise of themselves to the opposition up till now came into the limelight at the right minute. Rahane scored a magnificent 91 to take us to a position from where the target could be seen at the flip of some pages. To go 3-0 up required the coolness of the boss in the end. And Indians did that with 4 balls to spare. They had won it. He uprooted the wicket and gave an answer to the world.
It really fills my heart with guilt when I hear people calling Dhoni lucky and say that his stars have come back to support him now. Or some say whatever he touches turns into gold. Looking through the other window of my house, I wonder if he is the first captain in history to possess an intimate knowledge of alchemy to know which metals or things turn into gold. Is he lucky to get the bowler’s balls at places where he wants them to or he knows where the ball is going to be and automatically aligns himself to be there at the right place. We are not giving adequate credit to what MSD has done so far for Indian cricket, and rather giving it easy to a factor called luck and praising his horoscope maker everyday. Though the task remains of the whitewash now…