Dhoni retires, legacy to live on
His Test career ended over five years ago. His future in limited-over cricket was not going to get much longer. It had been 13 months since he made his last appearance in India colours. Yet Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s retirement from international cricket still saw an outpouring of emotions. A nation smarting under the onslaught of a viral outbreak came together to shower admiration, respect and love for a cricketer, who will be remembered for many reasons. India’s most successful captain in Tests and ODIs, the only captain in the world to win all ICC titles, batsman who forced the coinage of the term ‘best finisher’ in ODIs and a mega successful brand in the endorsements industry with a biopic in his name—he scaled many peaks.
Way behind his illustrious teammates purely in terms of talent and not exposed to systematic or advanced coaching in his formative years in Ranchi, Dhoni’s rise was a journey against the odds. Confronting him along with the opposition was decades of belief that star cricketers come only from big cities. Not that players from the backwaters did not play for India before Dhoni, but they remained peripheral characters far away from stardom. After Dhoni, players from these places are a different lot, confident of taking on the world. This reality often gets lost under the spotlight if you look at the Indian team. But look at domestic cricket and you will find that the hegemony of big teams is gone. That this transition took place during Dhoni’s time is not a coincidence. He broke stereotypes and inspired thousands to do likewise.
That is why Dhoni cannot be evaluated in terms of his cricketing deeds alone. Sticking strictly to cricket, his greatness was limited to the shorter versions. In Test matches, his records are impressive but not larger than life, as they are in the limited-over varieties. But the impact he made has the potential to motivate future generations. As long as a child picks up a bat in some far-flung corner of Chhattisgarh or Pondicherry and advertisers keep opening their purses for cricket in the times of pandemic, it will have something to do with Dhoni and his legacy.