A Real Ageless Copter

Swashbuckling hitter, unwavering skipper, fit as a fiddle at 37...and there’s still more to Indian cricket’s Dhoni era.

- Ashish Nehra

M .S. and I didn’t play junior-level cricket together, so ours is not a very long association. I saw him for the first time when I played the Duleep Trophy final for North Zone against East Zone in Mohali in March 2004. I didn’t know him at the time. We first met when we played for India in 2005, a one-day international against Pakistan in Kochi. Then, an injury ruled me out of professional cricket for more than three years. My friendship with him began only in 2009, on my return.

Since then, we have played many games together, including a couple of seasons for the Chennai Super Kings, till my retirement this year.

There are a few genuine reasons why Dhoni has been a game-changer in this cricketing era. His batting talent was quite obvious from the initial days. The time captain Sourav Ganguly promoted him to bat at number three against Pakistan in the Visakhapatnam ODI in 2005, he slammed a century. Then, he hammered 183 against Sri Lanka in Jaipur within the same year, and had everyone convinced that there was something exceptional about him. He had that uncanny ability to hit the ball out of the park, clean.