Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Indian cricket’s golden boy

At the emotional valediction that followed his 200th Test match at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium late last year, Sachin Tendulkar, in bidding farewell to the sport, was at pains to recall the extended support system that had carried him not only through two decades and more in India colours, but in his formative years as well. The cricketing legend named and thanked almost everyone who had played a hand in his growth and development from a pre-teen terror on Mumbai’s maidans to the colossus he was to become before calling it a day. Sachin’s farewell speech underlined a long-held truism — for all their talent, champions owe it to many unsung heroes, leaving their touch in the making of the final product. And in Mahi: The story of India’s most successful captain, Shantanu Guha Ray manages precisely that.

Going deep into the narrative of Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the person and the cricketer, Guha Ray unravels a fascinating, and largely untold tale. Himself a legend in the making, the India captain who took over the reins in rather unusual fashion with Rahul Dravid quitting the job almost without warning, has since gone from strength to strength. Capping a run of personal and team triumphs was the ICC World Cup victory three years ago, making Dhoni only the second India skipper to hold up the coveted trophy close to three decades after Kapil Dev Nikhanj first held it aloft at Lord’s on a June afternoon in 1983.

Behind the Dhoni fairytale though, is an engrossing yarn, one of belief and sacrifice. To recall much of that, Guha Ray, who has worked variously with wire agency United News of India, followed by a stint as a financial journalist and thereafter with sports broadcaster ESPN, goes deep into Dhoni’s past. He tracks down men who played a formative influence in the Ranchi-based cricketer’s life.

We thus meet Kedar Ranjan Banerjee, cricket coach at Dhoni’s alma mater, the DAV Jawahar Vidya Mandir School, who first talked about the future India gloveman and captain into giving up football for cricket, but only after long and hard persuasion. “Do you know my frustration?” Banerjee tells his wife Maya one day after first spotting a spark in the young teenager. “That bloody fellow is also a footballer,” Fortunately, “that bloody fellow” had an open mind and was persuaded into giving up life under the goalpost for the wicketkeeper’s gloves.

At this point it could be said that a legend was born. Yet there were many more hardships — including the depressing lack of finances in a typically Indian lower middle-class household that included two other siblings — to overcome. Call it luck, or fate if you will, but young Mahi found a pivot at many such turns in his life, which brings us to the “unassuming, portly” Paramjit Singh of Prime Sports, whose little store has to be searched for in Ranchi’s teeming Sujata Chowk, before yet another facet of how and why Dhoni is what he is today, unfolds.

Writes Guha Ray, “... in a way, both Singh and Dhoni were struggling; one had not even established his shop and the other had just started showing his promise in matches where records were rarely kept...” No money in the house meant no kit for the young cricketer. No kit meant no matches, so Paramjit Singh took it on himself to persuade BAS Sports owners Sumi and Ramesh Kohli in faraway Ludhiana to part with one, on his word alone. “Ab Mahi ko koi nahi rokega,” Singh told himself, after handing over the laden kitbag, packed with top of the line gear, to the speechless 15-year-old. “I prayed after Mahi had left. I thanked Waheguru for helping me,” Paramjit tells Guha Ray.

Fortunately, the author does not go too deeply into the cricketing side of a story well enough known, but does come up with relatively unknown nuggets relating to Dhoni’s later career, particularly after assuming the captaincy. These include how he managed to convince the selectors to give him a younger ODI team than they had intended ahead of the away series against Australia in 2009, and the ups and downs that inevitably follow every India captain throughout his stint.

A thoroughly engaging read, packed with information and anecdotes, this is possibly the most authoritative work on the life of a man who has already surpassed Sourav Ganguly as Indian cricket’s golden boy, and still has some mileage left in the tank.