Much before becoming the best captain in cricket, MS Dhoni began his international career as a hard-hitting top-order batter. Commonly known as one of the finest finishers, Dhoni time and again proved his mettle as a tactician by winning loads of trophies in his captaincy – the living proof of his skills.
One long-term teammate of India and IPL, Ravichandran Ashwin, explained one simple yet shocking quality that Dhoni singled out as a captain- sticking to the basics.
To Ashwin, who spoke to Sky Sports Cricket, “it’s very easy in my brain to answer that question. He (Dhoni) does all the most basic things right, whereas most other captains miss their most basic elementary things, which just makes the whole game look so much harder for them.”
When it came down to Ashwin, who captioned or said that “clear: bowl to his field but if you give something loose, wait for the fury” about how Dhoni laid out his instructions to the bowlers.
“He would never, for example: if he gave the ball to the bowler, the first thing he would say, ‘take your field and bowl to your field.” He hated that when a batter came to bat, and you would bowl a loose delivery,” Ashwin said.
According to Ashwin, Dhoni would throw him off attack if he bowled loose balls and gave easy runs to a batter. But if those runs were scored by a batter who “earned” them, there were no issues with the two-time world cup-winning captain.
“As for bowling, even if I put a dozen with well-claimed boundaries, he would not take me off the bowling. It would have me furious. He would make me feel that place and take me off the bowling,” Ashwin said.
And that is very fundamental to cricket, and over the years, I have learned that people have forgotten the basics. MS himself keeps it very simple on those accounts,” he added.
Ashwin mentioned an instance of how Dhoni gets the best from his bowlers by remembering the pace of Tushar Deshpande in IPL 2023, where he finished as the leading wicket-taker for Chennai Super Kings in the season in which they became champions, for the fifth time equaling the record.
“Last year’s IPL had him ”Tushar Deshpande,” and he got the best from that guy, and everybody talked about it,” Ashwin said, adding, “I know what exactly MS Dhoni would have told him, he would have told him, ‘get hit on the longer side of the boundary, give me two less runs than the last game.’ That does two things to the bowler, releases the pressure and makes him think of how better can I get on small sets of goals. Basic things well every day and every year, compared to the others.”
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