Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Limited-Overs Cricket's Very Own Don

Mahendra Singh Dhoni is the MOST CALCULATING AND COMPELLING limited-overs captain India has ever had, and his stepping down from a throne he practically owned happened because he is a man who knows not only his own mind, but also the pulse of Indian cricket, writes ANAND VASU.

- Anand Vasu

The calmly chilling tone in which those immortal words were uttered by the incomparable Marlon Brando in Francis Ford Coppola’s epic, The Godfather, reverberated in cinema halls around the world in 1972, a good nine years before limited-overs cricket’s very own Don was born. Make no mistake about it, Mahendra Singh Dhoni is the most calculating and compelling limited-overs captain India has ever had, and his stepping down from a throne he practically owned happened because he is a man who knows not only his own mind, but also the pulse of Indian cricket.

The winds of change were blowing in December 2014, when India was in Australia, and Dhoni, not wishing to be a withering stalk bending in the breeze or snapped by a gust, gave Test cricket away in typically understated fashion after the Melbourne game. He flew into the game under the radar, and left it just as stealthily, giving nothing away in a 45-minute post-match press conference, allowing a media release from the Board of Control for Cricket in India to do the talking for him, having decided to silence his captaincy, bat and big gloves in the longest form of the game. It’s fair to assume then, that the onetime Railways ticket-checker realised that his train was leaving the platform, and exited the stage before he was forced off it, politely or otherwise.