MS Dhoni is not ‘Cool’, Chennai Super Kings’ teammate Suresh Raina spills the beans

He might be known as ‘Captain Cool’ in the cricketing circles, but according to Suresh Raina, the former Indian skipper often gets angry, but only when there aren’t television cameras around.

Suresh Raina, who has shared the dressing room with MS Dhoni during his tenure with the Indian national cricket team and at Chennai Super Kings, spilled the beans while speaking to Gaurav Kapur in an interactive session on ‘Breakfast with Champions.’

“He doesn’t wear goggles and it is very difficult to predict what he is doing. His eyes will remain the same and you feel like telling him that ‘show some emotion’. But he gets angry a lot of time. You can’t see it on the camera but when he knows that there is a TV break, he will say ‘sudhar ja tu‘,” Raina said.

MS Dhoni’s ice-cool approach in tight situations during a game has earned him applauds from fans and experts throughout his career. His decisions too, which often seemed like gambles, has often taken people by surprise. The most iconic of them has to be throwing the ball to Joginder Sharma to bowl the last over of the World Cup T20 final in 2007. Pakistan required 13 runs to win with one wicket in hand but Sharma got rid of him with three balls to spare.

Suresh Raina lauded the decisions stating that Dhoni could read match situations extremely well. “He has made all this around him. He has given the boys chance in the team thinking that this is my team. His game-reading skill was different. Like a chess player, no one can read his move. Like they saying when he is chasing. He visualizes a lot. He steps out and then takes a single. That is not his game but he wants to tell the bowler that I can step out as well. He plays with the bowler as well,” he said.

Dhoni is the only Indian captain to have won all the three ICC tournaments — the T20 World Cup in 2007, World Cup in 2011 and the Champions Trophy in 2013. And Raina stated that the amount of success he has earned was because he’s never relaxed with a single plan of thought. “He has three games ready like ‘plan A,’ ‘plan B,’ and ‘plan C’. He always takes three plans to the ground whether he batting, fielding, wicket keeping or captaining the side. He plans in the night and then visualizes in the morning using his subconscious mind,” he said.

Walking down memory lane, Raina recalled a situation when Dhoni asked him to take a dig at Umar Akmal who had complained the umpire stating the southpaw was abusing him. “Once we were playing in Pakistan and Umar Akmal was batting and he complained to Dhoni that Raina is abusing me. I just said I did not abuse him. He asked me what happened and I told him that I was trying to throw at Umar and asked him to score some runs and chase down the target,” Raina said. “Dhoni told me ‘give him more’. This means break him and build some pressure on him. He a very good reader of the game. He knows what is going to happen and he know the next step.”

First Published: Nov 26, 2017 12:39 IST