IPL 2019. It is the eve of the star-studded opening game between hosts Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore. The vast gathering of media personnel await the press conferences of the two captains—CSK’s MS Dhoni and RCB’s Virat Kohli, respectively. Kohli enters the room first, and ends up fielding plenty of questions on his other avatar of being the Indian cricket captain—queries on the upcoming World Cup in England and how he tends to manage the workload of his squad members spread across various franchises.
When Kohli exits the room, anticipation builds for Dhoni’s arrival. Not just because he is the home captain at Chepauk, but also because he has rarely addressed the press since being relieved of his role of leading the country.
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Our questions are ready. But in walks CSK coach Stephen Fleming. And this is how it would remain for the rest of the tournament, one that Dhoni and CSK were defending no less, one that he would lead into yet another final, narrowly losing to Mumbai Indians on championship day. Yet, he wouldn’t once address anyone beyond the IPL commentators at post-match presentations.
By the end of his career, Dhoni’s stoic silence spoke more than his actual words—a far cry from what he was like when seated behind a clutch of microphones in the past. Quite like the length of his mane, Dhoni’s answers ended up getting shorter as his career progressed.
{{/usCountry}}By the end of his career, Dhoni’s stoic silence spoke more than his actual words—a far cry from what he was like when seated behind a clutch of microphones in the past. Quite like the length of his mane, Dhoni’s answers ended up getting shorter as his career progressed.
{{/usCountry}}It wasn’t always like that. There was once a time when Dhoni was as flamboyant with his words in front of journalists as he was on the field beyond the conference room, often using his unique sense of humour to disarm the scribes on the other side of his table.
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Take for example the 2011-12 tour of Australia, which began with a debacle of a Test leg that ended 0-4 for India. As the Test stalwarts left for India and were replaced by younger members for the T20 series, Dhoni was asked how the mood in the dressing room had changed.
Not much, he replied, apart from the music: “From Kishore Kumar, we have gone to Sean Paul.” No amount of analysis could better sum up the change of guard, and culture, underway at that point in the team.
Sometimes he was plain cryptic. Like when the Indian team arrived a day late for the Napier Test during their 2009 tour of New Zealand, preferring to stay back in Auckland. Wouldn’t it affect the team’s preparations, he was asked. Dhoni smiled, before replying with an answer for the ages:
“The mind doesn’t know if it’s Napier, or what you’re feeding it. You come and say this is Napier, it believes it is Napier. You say it is day, it believes it is day. If you see, it’s abstract,” he said, leaving his audience both flummoxed and entertained.
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At other times Dhoni was so sincere that his answers seemed self-deprecatory. On the tour of South Africa in 2010-11, ahead of the Cape Town ODI Dhoni spoke of why he would prefer to bat first in a day-night match, because “the ball also tends to do a little under lights”. Until a journalist asked why that was—what was the logic behind the white ball being affected by the floodlights.
“To be honest, I also only say that because I heard the commentators say that on TV when I was young. So, I don’t really know,” he said, causing awe for his honesty, and plenty of laughter. Just like after a particularly long tour with the series on the line, when he said: “I have three dogs at home. Even after losing a series or winning a series, they treat me the same way.”
The humour remained in his tone, for a short while at least, once these questions began probing for his retirement. After India were knocked out of the 2016 T20 World Cup in the semi-final, the ‘R’ word was brought up by an Australian journalist, who was summoned to the dais by Dhoni and made to pull up a chair beside him.
“You want me to retire? I was hoping it was an Indian media guy because I can’t really say if you have a brother or a son who can play for India, who is a wicketkeeper,” Dhoni said while addressing the journalist Samuel Ferris, who would later write about his experience in a column for cricket.com.au.
“Word has it Dhoni hates that question and was ready to pounce on an Indian journalist who was going to ask it. Even though I fired the wrong ammunition, it seems I took a bullet for my Indian colleagues.”
Different captains deal with stressful questions in different ways. His successor, Kohli, tends to return fire with an aggressive tone. Dhoni would turn wholly silent—first in pressers and later away from them.
Before India’s departure for the 2013 Champions Trophy in England, captain Dhoni was asked about the spot-fixing scandal that had rocked IPL that year. After all, CSK and Gurunath Meiyappan (son-in-law of N Srinivasan, the then BCCI president and also the owner of the Chennai team) were at the heart of the controversy. The questions were many. Dhoni remained mum right through it.
The silence had made headlines in 2012 too. That time it wasn’t journalists but VVS Laxman at the receiving end of it. Before taking the decision to retire, Laxman is said to have phoned his captain to tell him the news first. But the calls went unanswered. When Dhoni was later asked about it he admitted to being aloof.
“You think of it as controversy. But people who know me have often complained that I am someone who is very difficult to get hold of,” he said. “That may be the reason why Lacchu bhai could not get hold of me. I am trying to improve, but I have not really improved.”
The straw that broke the camel’s back and ensured Dhoni would completely cut off from airing his views came just before he handed the reins of the Indian team over to Kohli. After India’s narrow win against Bangladesh at the 2016 World Cup, Dhoni—a man who once dealt with the toughest grilling with a smile—snapped.
“I don’t think you are happy that India won. If you can’t analyse the reason why it was a low-scoring match, you shouldn’t ask such questions,” Dhoni retorted, just as he would sometime later when asked about his retirement once again. “Just because you have the freedom to ask questions doesn’t mean you can ask anything. You should judge why and when a thing should be done,” he said then.
The silence has since been deafening—through the 2019 World Cup, Dhoni’s final tournament for India, and for 13 months thereafter. It would remain that way until the very end. When he finally called it a day, Indian cricket’s most charismatic speaker allowed a short caption and a song by Mukesh to do all his talking.