Stand-in captain, stand-in blazer," he said with a smile when asked if he'd had one cut to fit his own shoulders yet. This was in 2008: India were still chasing Australia for the number one spot in the ICC's Test rankings and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, in Anil Kumble's absence, was leading the side for only the second time in the longer format. And while he had walked out for the toss wearing a clearly oversized jacket, it was abundantly clear that captaincy fit him just right.
On the field, he was calm and composed with a brash tendency for risk-taking that mirrored the bike-freak in him. Off the field, he was charming and earthy, ready with a smile if not with a quote. He always insisted that there was more to life than cricket and, as if amused by his indifference, the cricketing gods gave him more than anyone expected. The man, really, could do no wrong.
Three years on, with a blazer cut for him and a list of achievements too long to fit in its pockets, Dhoni finds himself in a strangely unfamiliar place: on the wrong end of a drubbing. For the past four weeks, India have been pummelled in England, stumbling from one catastrophe to the next with all the elegance of a car crash.
There seems to be more white in Dhoni's stubble each day and the smile, at one time carefree and irreverent, suddenly appears strained, bordering on the helpless; the look of a man who knows that, unpleasant as the cricket has been, the post-mortem will be worse still.
The reasons for this debacle, experts agree, are two-fold: too little planning and preparation and way too much cricket, leaving the players undercooked and exhausted at the same time. Just the numbers are enough to make one wince.
Heavy Workload: Since January 2008, Dhoni has played 38 Tests, 90 onedayers and 95 Twenty20 games - both for India and in the Indian Premier League. Basically, for three-and-ahalf years now he's played a game every three-and-a-half days. No international cricketer has played as much and a look at the ICC's Future Tours' Programme shows that the workload is not going to get any lighter, with India scheduled to play around 125 days of international cricket in the 12 months starting May 2011. England, in contrast, will play 88 in the same time period. This generation of players are superstars, no doubt; that does not mean they're superheroes.
On the first day of this Oval Test, as he received medical attention after a misjudged collection, television cameras zoomed in on Dhoni's heavily bandaged fingers. Each time the physio tugged at one, the Indian captain winced, muttering unprintables under his breath. There's a fairly accurate theory that suggests teams take on the characteristics of their captain. When Ganguly led India, the side seemed all heart, but the same players seemed to turn studious and efficient under Dravid fs stewardship. By that logic, this Indian squad, like Dhoni fs fingers, have been going from day to day, match to match, series to series patching themselves up as best as they can, hoping and praying things don ft fall apart as they fve done on this tour.
From a purely cricketing point of view, this tour is unlikely to affect Dhoni fs legacy, for he will always be the man who inspired small-town India to chase their cricketing dreams, the man who led India to the World Twenty20 and World Cup titles. However, this is also a chance for Dhoni to shake up the present in order to shape the future.
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