Bat with a bang
Alongside his growth as captain, Dhoni has also quietly improved as a batsman, surprising experts with how he has been able to slip into different roles depending on the situation.
Dhoni started with his own brand of power-hitting, coldly ignoring the manual and widening the horizons of unconventionality even in the offbeat world of one-day cricket. He then went a step further, took that style into Test cricket and succeeded there as well. “I simply believe that great players are those who take the longest time between two mistakes. I really don’t care about my technique and how I bat; for me, it’s about scoring runs and playing according to the situation,” he says.

His ability to adapt was apparent during the Lord’s Test. He saved India the match, making up for his lack of technical brilliance with guts and gumption. From the eyes of a purist, he’s perhaps the ugliest batsman in white flannels. But the modern fan doesn’t care if his back-lift comes from gully, or that he plays the straight-drive with the horizontal bat.

Slowly, reluctantly, even traditionalists had to agree that Dhoni could survive Test cricket with his natural charismatic style. But Dhoni then decided to break the pattern again by scoring a match-winning one-day fifty against the Lankans without a single boundary. His highest scores are all batting at number three, and he would ideally like to go back but he feels the time is not right just yet.

... contd.