On Dhoni's birthday, celebrating life lessons from Indian captain's leadership
Four years ago, on June 24, India made history. For the first time, we were officially the winners of the ICC Champions Trophy. Yes in 2002, we shared it with Sri Lanka due to rain in the finals but nothing takes away from the pleasure of winning in a final against a formidable home team, which finally happened in 2013.
India reached the finals on the back of a remarkable set of victories against South Africa, Pakistan, West Indies and Sri Lanka. The English team had become an Achilles' heel for the Indian team for quite a while now, especially for its captain MS Dhoni.
India was clean swept by England in a test series in England, 0-4, in 2011. Just a few months before the Champions Trophy, England did the unthinkable. On the back of outstanding display of cricket by the likes of Alastair Cook, Graeme Swan, Monty Panesar, Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen's special one in Mumbai, England beat India at its home 2-1 in a test series in late 2012.
Dhoni's career was staring down the barrel as after the England tour, when Australia toured India in early 2013, on the third day in the first test at Chennai, it seemed all but over for him until he produced a remarkable double century. This outstanding knock by the Indian captain not only turned the tide in that match but also set the momentum and India went on to win the Test series 4-0.
A funny Final
It was funny that rains and India always go hand in hand in the finals of the Champions Trophy. But this time around, the rain gods did allow for a truncated final of 20 overs-a-side, virtually making what MS called a "funny" incident that a 50-over tournament's final was decided by a 20-over match.
Among the most underrated performances in ODI cricket, I believe Virat Kohli's knock of 43 runs in this innings is one which deserves due credit. With wickets tumbling at the other end, Virat, in a way, curbed his instincts and ensured that he builds the edifice on which Jadeja later operationalised a late flourish to take India to a respectable 129-7 score.
"God is not coming, fight it out"
At 6.5 runs required an over, in home conditions, England nearly had no reason to believe they could lose this one.
But MS Dhoni had other plans and the words he spoke in the press conference, when asked what he told the boys at mid-time, continue to reverberate in my ears every single time I feel down in my life:
"Nobody looks to the left of the pavilion. That was the side from where the rain was coming from... I said to them that God is not coming to save us. If we want to win this trophy, we will have to fight it out."
A spirited fightback ensured the match goes down till the wire. The 18th over by Ishant Sharma had two wide balls and a six, thereby eight runs conceded in the first two officials balls bowled, taking the score line down to 20 runs in 16 balls.
When I'm often encountered with a situation where I've to stay in the present and not think too much about the future, I try and juxtapose myself in this situation. I would rate Ishant's next half of the over to be even better than the squaring off of Ricky Ponting to get him caught in the slips by Rahul Dravid which he orchestrated during the 2007-08 tour of Australia.
And then the last over by Ravichandran Ashwin. The kind of confidence that his captain had in Ashwin was at its best display in the 2010 Champions League game held in South Africa where, despite bleeding 23 runs in the super-over in a match, MS went on to show immense faith in his carrom ball specialist who happened to come up with most wickets by the end of the tournament and become it's Player of the Series. MS took a leap of faith in Ashwin's abilities and oh boy, how well did he deliver!
A victory to cherish for a long time
Harsha Bhogle's immortal words were just perfect for the occasion:
"Tredwell misses. Dhoni misses. But it doesn't matter. India wins the Champions Trophy."
For a rare moment, MS let out the emotion in him. Later, he declared in the press conference that indeed it was a special win because of the way in which India played and won the match. The man who nearly had his career finished just a few months ago was back at the top of the world. And the moment at which it finally arrived, his 32-year-old self just allowed a glimpse into his emotions. For the world, though, most of these emotions got finally unravelled through his film Untold Story three years later.
Learning leadership, the Mahi way
This was also the phase of my life when I got a chance to jointly coordinate a team of outstanding juniors for organising a week-long event- HLIC - Seekho 2013 (seekho is the hindi equivalent of the verb learn) at my alma mater.
I could not help but correlate lessons from the leadership style of the Indian captain and implement the same during my efforts to bring out the best in my team. To identity potential talent, to give them the required guidance, to nurture the right skills, to let the natural instincts among the most talented not be disturbed, to ensure proper coordination with fellow team coordinators, to blunt your egos and most importantly, to try and teach the team to digest victories and swallow losses in the same manner.
I did go right at a few places and went horribly wrong at a few others during this time, but like most others in my team at that time, we owned up to it because we all were invested in this team and wanted to see the event become the best.
A Great Leader - of the team, for the team, by the team
Probably MS finally got the team he wanted starting from this tournament and this was evident in the way he marshalled his troops and executed his plans with utmost majesticity throughout the tournament. The Champions Trophy 2013 tournament and this event taught me how important it is to have a good team for anything or anyone to succeed.
The celebration photo (above) is the most apt description of the sheer joy which was generated post this victory among the team members. But amiss here was the captain, who as always, was standing in a corner and was just happy seeing his teammates having all the fun.