Cricket Column: Dhoni wins battle against Generation Next - but just

Sports Sunday 07/May/2017 14:35 PM
By: Times News Service
Cricket Column: Dhoni wins battle against Generation Next - but just

On Saturday, Rising Pune Supergiant defended a low score of 148 against Sunrisers Hyderabad, and Mumbai Indians bundled out Delhi Daredevils for 66 -- which is what IPL history would tell us -- but outside the fixtures an unscheduled, invisible but quite engaging battle was on across the cities just the same day.
It was between MS Dhoni and the Generation Next of Indian cricket. The winner was the old war horse even when the legend looked anything but cool or hot, or a good mix of both.
No prizes for guessing the names of the Generation Next warriors. Delhi Daredevils have four of them who on May 4 made chasing a target in excess of 200 look incredibly simple.
Expectations were high before the second match on Saturday, the one between Daredevils and Mumbai Indians, had got off to a start, and that was because the whole of India was waiting impatiently to make sure that what they got to witness on May 4 was no fluke.
Though Karun Nair, Sanju Samson, Rishabh Pant and Shreyas Iyer would like us to believe that there was no method in their Thursday madness, Indian cricket fans were hoping to see them repeat the madness, with a method or otherwise, that got Delhi home against Gujarat Lions.
A few hours earlier, Dhoni was out in the middle wielding his weapon, but his exploits weren’t exciting.
Just two sixes and two fours in his personal score of 31 off 21 balls. The target of 149 looked easy for Sunrisers but David Warner, Shikhar Dhawan, Kane Williamson and Yuvraj Singh couldn’t take the team to the 149-run target, alone or in company, and that’s when we begin to appreciate the Dhoni factor in the Saturday story.
When Dhoni walked out to bat in the middle of the 15th over, Pune had been wobbling with just 99 runs on the board and just five overs left to lift the run rate. By then they had already lost Ajinkya Rahane, Rahul Tripathi and Ben Stokes, and in the next over Steve Smith and Daniel Christian walked back to the dressing room, and the total was a paltry 105. With all the heroes Harsh Goenka chose to celebrate a couple of days ago back in the dugout, the unenviable task of taking the team to a total -- even 130 looked welcome at that time -- that would give some confidence to the bowlers was left with Dhoni the unsung hero.
At the end of the day, MS was one of the only three Pune guys who had posted a double-digit score with a strike rate in excess of 100. Stokes and Rahane were the other two, while Smith, at 34 off 39 balls, with no hits to the boundary, registered a strike rate of 87.17. The captain was all smiles at the presentation ceremony, hailing “the stronger boys” who could time the ball.
Dhoni had already scored a match-winning 61 not out off 34 balls in the early stages of the season to put the Pune campaign back on track, and he was Stokes’ rock on the latter’s way to a match-winning 103.
Dhoni had managed to score only 26 runs off 33 balls on that May 1 match, but one shouldn’t overlook the fact that only three Pune players had gone past 10: Dhoni, Stokes and Christian.
MS had joined Stokes in the sixth over when Pune had lost four wickets for 42 runs, and he had stayed on with Stokes till the 17th to take the team to 118, setting the stage for Stokes to launch the final assault.
Dhoni’s role in the Pune march may not be just as visible as the world would like it to be, but it’s a fact that he was more than a silent partner in the whole affair. Why Goenka singles him out for punishment is a mystery. Does the owners’ brother really understand the game of cricket?
Now, let’s look at how the Generation Next lost the plot. Samson wanted to hit the first ball of the match out of the ground, but ended up in the hands of Lendl Simmons. He could have waited a bit before switching into what they call fearless cricket.
Iyer was out to a short ball from Lasith Malinga in the second over, Pant in the fourth and Nair in the fifth. The New Generation lost the battle inside five overs for 31 runs, chasing of a target of 213.
Pant, when he got out on 97 against Gujarat, had looked shocked and not ready to believe that he was really out. He had seemed to indicate to the umpire that there was no edge, even when the sound of the wood hitting the leather was too loud and the resulting deviation was too prominent.
On Saturday, he mistimed a pull off the third ball he had faced, a short ball from Jasprit Bumrah, and there was the same look of disbelief. Pant is a great talent for India, but he needs to consider the unpleasant realities lying in wait for him at the crease before he would begin his stride out into the middle. It’s always good to have a method in madness.
At the moment, Dhoni seems to have got the better of the Generation Next. But just. The inevitable will happen. Until then, let the battle be on.
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The writer is a freelance contributor based in India. All the views and opinions expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not reflect those of Times of Oman