Weekly Sports Newsletter: Dhoni’s last-ball four, Miandad’s six and the stillness of their minds

Early in the week, the internet, that ever-eager celebrator of all events, was raising a toast to Javed Miandad’s 1986 last-ball six, and also recalling Chetan Sharma’s waist-high full toss. Days later, late at night, it was busy glorifying MS Dhoni’s last-ball four and trolling Jaydev Unadkat’s shin-high full toss.

The Miandad moment was iconic, it shaped the destiny, defined the demeanour, of India and Pakistan cricket. In contrast, Dhoni’s four was routine. It was just another IPL spark in this long T20 season of daily fireworks. Unlike the India-Pakistan Sharjah encounter of the 80s, the Dhoni-Unadkat face-off, in the final moment of MI vs CSK game, didn’t have much context.

What it did provide was a reminder that elite sport, despite the change of formats and rules, isn’t always about skills. At the highest level, where most players have been a child prodigy as juniors and proven match-winners as adults, most top sporting battles are won and lost in the mind.

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If someone takes pains to do a detailed scrutiny of why the Miandads and Dhonis of the world will always have an edge over the Sharmas and Unadkats, the ‘hours spent at nets’ wouldn’t be a decisive factor.

Pundits say that the secret of batsmen like Dhoni middling the ball more often than not in the slog overs is their capacity to ‘retain their shape’. These nonplussed clinical hitters are praised, and envied, for their stillness at the crease. The lesser discussed, and a far more important, attribute of their batting is the stillness of their mind.

Unperturbed by the situation, they don’t think too far ahead. In interviews, players often talk about remaining in the present when thrown in the frenzy of an intense close game. That’s the easier part. Dhoni and Miandad actually walk that talk. While in pressure situations, they don’t think about the consequences of winning or losing. They don’t start imagining the hugs of their mates, the applause of the crowd or the pictures in the newspapers the next day. They also don’t let the fear of failure cloud the immediate task at hand – facing the ball and sending it over the fence.

MS Dhoni (28 not out off 13) batted like the finisher of his heydays. (Sportzpics/IPL)

A study on anxiety in sports conducted on table tennis players threw up an interesting observation. When top paddlers tried too hard to win, or were too scared to lose, they tended to fix their gaze on the ball. This diminished their ability to pick cues that would give an idea about the stroke and strategy of their opponents.

The game’s greats always remain alive to ‘contextual information’ that can be sucked out of their opponents. Their thinking process while on the field of play is too evolved to get side-tracked by the noise around them. They also don’t get, what psychologists call, ‘Paralysis by Analysis’ – the inability to do acts that are otherwise routine but suddenly, because of their overthinking, are difficult to perform. Champion athletes have a tight leash on their minds, they don’t let it wander. They keep it busy by constantly looking for clues, scanning data and calculating risks and rewards.

Jaydev Unadkat during MI vs CSK match. Sportzpics for IPL

Years after his retirement, tennis legend Andre Agassi shared a priceless observation that made the less-mortals understand why he was called the greatest-ever service-receiver. It wasn’t about the swing of his racket, it was about the sharpness of his mind.

His story about how he negated Boris Becker’s famously booming serve was both comical and magical. “If he’s serving in the deuce court and he puts his tongue in the middle of his lip, he is either serving up the middle or to the body. But if he put it to the side, he was going to serve out wide.” Agassi wasn’t consumed by the thought of facing the Becker missile, his brain was ticking, searching for the hint that would help him hit a winner.

Back to cricket and the Dhoni-Unadkat duel. Watch the over again and see how Dhoni seemed to have second-guessed every variation that the left-arm pacer threw at him. When Dhoni reached the striker’s end, CSK needed 16 from the game’s final four balls.

Unadkat, despite the internet’s unflattering assessment of him, is a T20 specialist, someone who triggers bidding-frenzy on auction days. He is known to be smart, till he meets someone smarter.

His first ball to Dhoni, bowled over the wicket and travelling diagonally across the pitch, was cross-seamed and full. The reputed finisher seemed to have anticipated the Unadkat stock ball. He clubbed it brutally, over the bowler’s head. The sightscreen would have got a dent by the power. England’s best-known cricket analyst Simon Hughes would tweet: “He had made his point, This kind of shot is totally demoralising to any bowler. Had the desired effect.” He was spot on.

MS Dhoni in action vs MI. (Sportzpics for IPL)

When ‘full’ doesn’t work, what would a rattled pacer do next? You don’t need to be a Dhoni to guess that. As expected, Unadkat attempts his special slow bouncer. The master seems to have seen it coming. He stays in the crease, plays the horizontal bat shot and the ball sails over the fine leg fielder for four.

It finally boils down to 4 runs from the final ball. Dhoni hasn’t premeditated, tried anything silly or moved in the crease. Unsettling bowlers by confusing him, that’s not his style. For the last ball too he doesn’t blink. True to the predictable script, it’s an almost-yorker. Dhoni takes it on full and sends it across the fence behind square.

Untouched by this outpouring of emotions around him, he walks to the pavilion with the casualness of a 9-to-5 office-goer returning home after a hard but satisfying day at office. Such was his matter-of-fact triumphant stroll to the pavilion that the bat in his hand could have passed as a briefcase.

The private man who keeps the world at an arm’s length, isn’t the kind to talk about his heroics. Not Miandad. On the anniversary of his six off Chetan Sharma, an old newspaper clipping cropped up on twitter. It had a story from the day after the final where Miandad, sitting at Sharjah’s famous host Abdul Rehman Bukhari’s office, spoke about the six.

“As I surveyed the field and sized up where the men were standing on the line on the on-side. I had a hunch that Chetan would try to bowl the ball at a yorker length. What else could the poor lad try? I had decided that I would step up just a shade to convert the length if the ball was dipping to the blockhole. I had an easy job, I got a juicy full toss. It was easy work to whack it between mid-wicket and long on”.

Just replace Chetan with Unadkat in the above quote and you would have Dhoni speaking about his final ball four. Greatness is about staying calm while in chaos.

Do send your feedback to sandydwivedi@gmail.com

Sandeep Dwivedi
National Sports Editor
The Indian Express