“from 1929 hrs consider me as Retired”
A homemade montage on Instagram with a classic Bollywood song in the background and this message as a caption. And it was enough for MS Dhoni to bid adieu to international cricket.
No fancy stuff whatsoever. Just like the “Mahi way”.
Well, minutes after the post went viral and the world was still getting in terms with the decision, the entire cricket media in India was caught napping on a Saturday evening, which was also a national holiday.
Major print publications in the country had fewer editions the next day because of Independence Day and the rest of the media is not at its full-strength of late due to the COVID-19 guidelines. Hence, those who were at the sports desk during that evening shift had to play out of their skins to see this through.
Intentionally or not, but even on his last day as an international cricketer, Dhoni did manage to grill the media, like he had done throughout his career.
The man has always been allergic to the media and had multiple fallouts with scribes. In the Indian Cricket journalist community there is hardly anyone who can claim to know him thoroughly or has the luxury of reaching out to Dhoni without taking prior approval, which is pretty rare of course and a young journalist like me can’t even imagine.
very few interactions with #MSDhoni over the years, and i am only venturing a guess here….but he is likely having a quiet chuckle to himself at the discomfort of sports journalists scrambling to handle this on a saturday evening 😀 #dhoniretires #Dhoni
— Gaurav Kalra (@gauravkalra75) August 15, 2020
Entire cricket media caught and bowled @msdhoni
— Sunandan Lele (@sunandanlele) August 15, 2020
As a captain, Dhoni always believed that whatever happens in the dressing room should stay there. That’s why he gave limited access to media in the team affairs. During his tenure, the relationship between the Indian Cricket team and media was at its lowest point.
In 2009, on the eve of India’s opening match against Bangladesh in the ICC World T20 in Nottingham, Dhoni came to the pre-match press conference with the rest of the team and the support staffs to deny the reports claiming a rift between him and his deputy Virender Sehwag. Though he did not take a single question in that presser but just read out a statement and went back.
Dhoni was so allergic to the media that even after the famous World Cup triumph as a captain in 2011, he did not give a single exclusive interview to any of the publications in the country.
Well, one can say that it was his choice. However, the fans certainly deserved an answer from the Chennai Super Kings skipper when an official of the team was indicted for betting. But unfortunately, he chose not to speak on that issue.
In 2014, Dhoni retired from Test cricket in the middle of series in Australia. For the journalists who were covering that tour, the news came as shocker as the decision was communicated to them through a BCCI press release just 44 minutes after Dhoni himself addressed a press conference, where he had spoken on a lot of topics barring that important one.
A similar process was followed in 2017, when he gave up the limited-overs captaincy. A press release was drafted for the scribes with the announcement but without a word from Dhoni himself. The most successful white-ball skipper of the country went away just like that.
As journalists we are very much aware of the fact that the accessibility of these top Indian cricketers are well protected and one can only get hold of them only in the press conferences. But with Dhoni in a presser one could only expect nothing but dismissive replies and sarcastic one-liners. Even on some occasions he went on to ridicule a question and embarrassed journalists for doing their job, like he did with Samel Ferris, an Aussie reporter for querying about his retirement plans following India’s semi-final exit from the ICC World T20 2016.
During the 2015 World Cup there was a famous quote of MSD which he told Dr. R.N.Baba, the then media manager of the Indian Cricket team.
“If the media is happy with you, then you are not a good media manager.”
I think this quote pretty aptly sums up Dhoni’s uncomfortable relationship with the Indian media. Well, people can say that he set a wrong precedent with this attitude but at the end of the day, he was just doing his job and so were the journalists (not always but on most occasions).