@LNL - More or less agree with everything you said.Dhoni is probably the best thing to have happened to Indian cricket in a long time.
Some of my favorite Dhoni moments -
1.In 2000,when Ranji Trophy was still played on a zonal basis,a team of losers representing Bihar travelled to Calcutta to play zonal heavy-weights West Bengal in the first round league match.Lakshmi Ratan Shukla who was kind of a superstar in those days for Bengal ran in to bowl from Club House end and was smacked for some consecutive fours by a little known wicketkeeper.Shukla was enraged and walked up and gave a mouthful to that keeper and then went back to start his run-up.The result was another set of fours.Shukla was livid by now and would probably would have punched that batsman.The captain(Devang Gandhi probably) had to intervene and he sent him to 3rd man and then kept him out of the attack for some time.When I read this incident next morning in The Telegraph while sipping my morning coffee,it struck me.After all,Indians didn´t hit fours when sledged in those days.And secondly,since when did cricketers from Bihar started coming into news?I just skimmed back to read the name of that batsman,some M.S. Dhoni it was.Okie and he is also a wicket-keeper,that´s nice.This looks interesting.
2.Around July-August 2004,a new face(Dhoni) was given a chance in the Africa bound India A side.As is well known now,this is when he really burst into the scene.He smashed 2 or 3 centuries coming in at no. 3 and won the tourney for India.And some of these knocks came against Pakistan to boot,what that implied to me was that he is a man for the big ocassion.Javagal Srinath later went on to comment that he is the next big thing in Indian cricket,in his whole life he had seldom seen anyone stepping out to pacers and hitting them out of the ground with such confidence.And all this while,the really exciting part was that he was a wicketkeeper first and a batsman leter,so we probably had some genuine answer for Gilchrist....finally.
3.April 2005 Vizag,a stellar 148 versus Pakistan(against whom he was to play many more top drawer innings).I¨ll not go into the details here,but the stand-out thing for me was how he played Shahid Afridi in that innings.Afridi was an exceedingly effective one day bowler in those days and had stifled all Indian batsman without any blemish.But even he couldn´t contain Dhoni that day.One particular lofted off-drive still lingers in memory.He played his shots not just with a lot of power but also with thought.
4.October 2005 Jaipur,a mamoth unbeaten 183 versus Sri Lanka through which he confirmed that his Vizag innings was no fluke.But this innings told a thousand things.First,it came when India were batting second and chasing(not setting) a big enough target and he remained not-out.He could play when it mattered.Second,it was a huge score(anything above 130s is).He could play till it mattered.Third and most important,he hit more than 1 clean sixes against Muralitharan and well Vaas too.Now c´mon,you don´t hit Vaas for sixes,not on sub-continental pitches atleast.This guy had to be special
5.Around late January or early February 2006,India are due to tour Pakistan shortly.India have just thrashed Sri Lanka 6-1 in ODIs and 2-0 in Tests and Dhoni was the MOS in the ODI series.Dhoni has caught the imagination of an entire nation and every1 wants to see how he¨ll fare in the enemy camp.Meanwhile Shoaib Akhtar has fired the expected salvo at him,¨Let him come,I¨ll pepper him with bouncers¨.But the response from Dhoni wasn´t on the expected lines.Having grown up seeing Sachin and countless other Indian players just stare back mutedly at such verbal assaults,I hadn´t expected any response from him.Why does he need to respond to every such inane chatter anyway,I thought.But a few days later when a journalist reminded him of this comment from Shoaib,his response was pleasing to say the least.¨He doesn´t know me.I have faced and pulled many bouncers in my career.If he still wants to try it,he can¨.Cool!And so he did,Dhoni´s best innings till date came soon enough in the 2nd test at Faisalbad,where along with Pathan he bailed India out of an almost hopeless situation against a rampant Akhtar.He did pull,hook and drove Akhtar for fours(and may be sixes too,I don´t remember too clearly).After the day´s play got over he said,¨I walked in to a very hostile spell from their pacers and was struggling in my first over.I realised soon enough that if I don´t take the attack against them they¨ll run over us in no time¨.So how´s that for sticking to what you said?
6.Mid 2005.Dhoni was quite popular by now and was obviously an in-demand cricketer in the domestic circuit.He was approached by several illustrious Ranji teams including West Bengal to leave Jharkhand come and play for their respective teams.It really would have been a logical next step on his part.Jharkhand was a plate division team and consequently it wasn´t easier to stay in limelight playing for such a team.After all,he still wasn´t quite a certainty in the national side,Dinesh Kaarthick was always pushing him for the berth.But the response from Dhoni was impresive.He refused all the invitations and said that he is happy playing for Jharkhand and would continue to do so.The reason being that anyway he wouldn´t get to play many matches for the domestic teams as he¨ll mostly be busy playing for India(so he was confident about his place) and it¨ll be better to play those few matches for Jharkhand rather than any high-profile team as their cricketers will benefit more by playing along side him.
7.Jul 2007.Dhoni has just been appointed the captain of Indian squad for the Twenty20 World Cup to be held in South Africa.What is the first thing he says after being appointed the captain?¨The players will have to take responsibility for their perormance¨.Dead true,no captain has a magic wand.
There have been many more instances,but above are the ones which come first to my mind.
Ofcourse he has become much milder these days and it hasn´t been any easy now.Teams come better prepared for him and he also has a much hyped team to captain.But he isn´t doing bad.For one,he has adjusted well and managed to play important innings even if he is struggling.
A rather quaint thing that I have found about his play is that he still has to get both the acts right at the same time.If he is batting very well,there is always a murmur or two about his keeping,he lets a few chances go amiss(the England tour last year,where every keeper struggles anyway).And if keeping is very clean,he is not batting as well(the WI tour in 2006 and the current tour down under).I would like to believe it is just a coincidence or a notorious interpolation by my mind where none was needed.
Having said all this,let me also point out his two most dismal displays will date-
1.The stupid slog in the final day at Wankhede against a mediocre England in 2006.That was a crap shot Dhoni.
2.The World Cup last March.The first ball dismissal against Muralitharan was disappointing to say the least.
So in a nutshell,this is why I am a big Dhoni fan as of now -
1.Much more often that not,he plays when it matters and as I said before till it matters.
2.He is the nearest thing to Gilchrist we have ever seen.
3.He doesn´t bog down when sledged.
4.He has the grace to calm down things when they have gone nasty.
5.He has won us a World Cup(Okie,that was far fetched)
6.He has genuine albeit grudging respect all around the cricketing world.Sample some of his admirers.When he was still competing with Dinesh Kaarthick,The Hindu(a Chennai based newspaper) wrote that it is Dinesh´s misfortune that he has to compete with Dhoni.Parvez Musharraf was more eager to meet Dhoni than any1 else when the Pakistan tour in 2006 was about to end.Even though South Africa had just mauled India 4-0 in ODI´s last to last year,1 thing Greame Smith did say was thät ¨Dhoni has guts¨.My no-nonsense friend who stays in Sydney swears that if there is 1 cricketer apart from Sachin whom the Aussies respect,it is him.
7.He isn´t a bore outside the ground,he drives his bike at 200 Kmph on empty streets in nights,tries out different things with his hair and rumour has it that he dated a hot actress some time back
.
I¨ll end with the snippets of an article which Mukul Kesevan wrote in his blog some time back.It is a tad exaggerated(and mind it,I didn´t advocate giving the Test captaincy to Dhoni at any stage
) but is much more correct than wrong.
¨I know it's silly to get carried away, but not since Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi have Indians watched their cricket team being led with such nerveless flair. And the Nawab was born hosed and shod with Winchester to help and a silver service in his mouth. Our current skipper does a commercial where he talks about how he could have been a ticket-collector in the railways! There's something about Dhoni …
People keep saying that he represents India's new mofussil man, the hungry provincial, but he's more than a stereotype. If stamping their feet and scowling at errant players is typical of the find-someone-to-blame reflex of Indian captains, then Dhoni is the first grown-up skipper we've had in decades. I don't think giving Joginder Sharma the last over twice-running was such a stroke of genius: he bowled short and wide and it was the tension of the game rather than Sharma, that kept Misbah-ul-Haq at bay, but Dhoni had his reasons and he backs his hunches without looking oppressed by the need to make big decisions. For that we should all be grateful. They should give him the Test captaincy. Not because Twenty20 is a guide to Test form, but because he's the only adult in Indian cricket.¨
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. And finally, it was heartening to see an Indian fast bowler really bowling Fast. Ishant 
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