The Spectator

Quiet Saturday evening of a National Holiday. A two-line captioned video clip makes its way onto the social media, and within minutes stirs up a concoction of emotions across the country of over a billion people. Everything about the post – audio, video, caption, timing, has some logic. The full stop had arrived and delivered by the man himself, in his own revered manner. We did not hear Mahendra Singh Dhoni speak but like always the mind took centre stage over emotions on a public platform. The emotions never really came to the fore, did they? We did not see much expression when he was run out for nought in the debut match, or when India crashed out of the 2007 World Cup. There was no animated reaction when 0-8 along with a home series loss to England threatened to cut short Dhoni’s captaincy nor when his run out in the 2019 World Cup virtually marked the conclusion of India’s campaign. The emotions did show up on occasions, especially when he was not out in the middle – press confe...