I come from a city whose ethos is defined by three things – filter coffee, chess, and cricket. Number one soothed me, number two fascinated me, and number three changed me.
There’s a fourth one as well. Not a thing. But a person. Probably the one who redefined Number three in the city. I’ll tell you about the guy soon.
But before that, there’s some grounding to be done.
September 24, 2007, Chennai.
It was a Monday evening and the streets were buzzing with the regular traffic honks. I was a five year old back then, too naive to understand any sport except athletics, probably because it had the simplest rules and I knew a guy named Bolt existed. That was it. Just like any other evening, I kept running barefoot around my apartment and returned home with injuries.
So, in Chennai it used to be like this. At 4 pm, post school, you would find kids roaming barefoot on the streets, with willows and a cork ball that looked seemingly a hundred years old, a couple of tyres for the stumps, a pair of slippers to mark the (so-called) 22 yards pitch, and additional pairs to mark the boundaries. Well, I was banned from the game primarily due to 2 reasons – there were only guys who played, and excessive heat. But then I realized I loved watching the game more than actually playing it. I still do.
I had difficulty learning a few things in childhood, so when I tried to understand the game on my own, I failed. But I remember smiling at each and every shot that was hit, probably because I liked the sound of it, or the boys screaming, I don’t really know. But I knew I liked the game.
I don’t know whether I was good at sports, but I loved every bit of it. My dad had an old cricket bat of his, and a wrinkled red ball at home. No one used it, because no one was there to play. And I was too thin to hold the bat up.
When I was 6, my parents took me along to a shop an bought a couple of badminton racquets for themselves so that they could play during weekends. 2 cool Yonex ones. Well, I eventually fought and got a cheaper one for myself as well. So every Sunday, it was a routine – my dad stood on one side of the court, my mom and I on the other side, as I learned to play badminton because I had no one else to play with. But my eyes were still on the willows.
April 02, 2011.
It was a Saturday, I was a nine year old, and I don’t exactly remember why the school was working on a Saturday. But then, instead of the usual dispersal at 3 pm, the school had asked the parents to pick their kids before lunch. I was happy obviously, but I didn’t realize I would see my dad sitting in front of the TV, without distractions, for 8 hours straight.
The 2011 WC final began at around 2:30 PM, and I became impatient after 3 hours of continuous cricket. I was wondering why does a team bat for this long, as I couldn’t understand the difference between T20 and 50-over cricket. It became dusk. The match was still going on. It was the second innings. It was summer in Chennai so we had kept all our windows open, and my dad had shifted the position of the bean bag from the living room to the balcony. By the time, my mom had served us dinner, my 2-year old brother fell asleep and I remember sitting on my dad’s lap patiently waiting. At 9:45pm, I could see my dad smile. My mom, who stopped watching cricket after the Anil Kumble era, and who has never been to Chepauk, sat on the couch too. I was just looking at the numbers on the board. I was slowly learning the game on my own. I still remember asking my dad questions on what is happening, why is the stadium quiet, why there are two umpires, and why is there a man behind the stumps. Lol, I was too dumb.
At around10:20 pm, my dad took me off his lap, got off the bean bag and screamed. I had never seen him so happy in a while. My mom smiled too. My dad jumped twice, seeing him, so did I. I could sense celebrations on the streets. My entire apartment was awake. There was noise. Then I realized, what a sport means to a nation.
May 12, 2011. Chepauk, Chennai.
One of the oldest cricket stadiums in India, the Chepauk stadium is about 30 minutes from my home. I had never been there until, on one fine evening, my dad pulled me to an AC box inside the stadium and made me watch a 40 over game. It was the Indian Premier League. I was a hyper active kid back then, he would have probably done it to test my patience, but I had never been happier. Filled with yellow jerseys around, I noticed a man on the pitch scoring a half century and not getting dismissed until the end of the first innings. I was curious to know his name. Then my dad told, “You remember one guy hit a 6 for India during the WC Final? He’s that guy”. I was like “Hmmmmmmmmm”.
That’s when I started following this man named Mahendra Singh Dhoni. The city started loving him, and by 2013-14, he had already become Chennai’s adopted boy. I have seen never seen the city celebrate an outsider to this extent after Rajinikanth. By 2013, he had already become India’s finest captain ever. I was like “woah, this is sport”.
I had started to understand cricket much better, much simpler and much deeper by 2016. The rules were clear, my analysis had become quicker and it became my stressbuster. But that one man remained constant throughout my theoretical cricketing journey. Be it press conferences, Chepauk matches, advertisements, I could see him everywhere. A biopic was released in 2016, and the man’s journey from a ticket collector to a trophy collector fascinated me.
There was more to just his success that made me love him. It was his aura. The calm, cool-headed, funny, street-smart behavior made me go in awe. I learnt that it is okay to be apart from the crowd, it is okay not to be conventional, it is okay to go unorthodox sometimes, if things don’t go our way. I knew only one face when it came to Indian cricket. But I was proud of it.
Fast forward to 2019, I was a fully grown adult, when the man played his last international match of his career, WC Semi-Final. I must admit this, I knew it was gonna be his last anyway. I was mentally prepared to accept the fact that the golden era of Indian cricket was nothing but over. When the man’s last run in blue jersey was just a few inches short in the crease, I immediately switched off the television to realize that when you care for someone so much and wanna give them their happy endings, people will remember you but when it comes to your endings, you gotta be mentally prepared for the biggest heartbreaks.
The man’s popularity has only grown with time. From the crowd noise hitting 130+ decibels whenever the camera zooms onto him, to his post match conferences hitting more views than any other regular T20 matches, to expecting a “definitely not” every time he has his mic, the fandom is insane. Once a fellow cricketer told, “You have to be a proper devil to hate MS Dhoni”. The man go to extreme lengths to save a game, can still scare the opposition when 11 is needed off 3, can send any batsman to the pavilion while standing behind the stumps, and has always been the smartest sporting brain I know.
The man defined the golden era for Indian cricket, and has always inspired me to take things lightly and accept failures with a straight face.
From kids to centenarians, the era of a man who has made people jump off their seats irrespective of match results, is nearing its end.
There was Sunil Gavaskar, then Sachin Tendulkar, and then there was Virat Kohli.
But there’ll never be another MSD.
The Writopian Girl 
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