MS Dhoni’s words have often inspired his juniors and teammates. His contribution behind the rise of the Indian cricket team is huge. No wonder, his vision is still recalled by his colleagues time to time even though MS Dhoni has been out of action since last one year. Ravichandran Ashwin recently shared an incident which again speaks about Dhoni’s vision of the game.
The off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin in his interaction with Mazher Arshad on YouTube recalled one Test match between India and West Indies from 2011 in Mumbai where Ashwin failed to take the Indian cricket team home and was given a piece of advice by Ms Dhoni.
Ravichandran Ashwin recalls the Test
“In the final innings, we looked good to chase, but all of a sudden, we had a collapse,” Ravichandran Ashwin revisited. “I found myself batting with the tail. It was very interesting because I had a hundred in the first innings. Second innings, I was again batting well. I was 20-odd. I was left with I think Varun Aaron at the other end, and I think it might have been two balls, two runs to get… we had two wickets in hand.”
Ashwin remembered how the Indian cricket team needed just two runs off the final two deliveries. Ravichandran Ashwin decided to skip big shots and eventually the penultimate delivery ended in a dot ball. The last ball required Ashwin to hit it but West Indies ran him out to end the match in a draw. If Ashwin could win the match for Indian cricket team, Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s team would have sealed the series 3-0.
What MS Dhoni would have done?
“I didn’t want to risk going for a big shot, and then, the next batsman coming in and getting out – we could lose the Test match, from being in a position of strength, it was not even 50-50,” Ravichandran Ashwin remembered. “So I blocked that ball from Fidel Edwards, because it was swinging nicely and the chances of a No.11 getting out was pretty high. It was the calculation I’d put in my head; it was all coming from how much first-class cricket I had played, and whatever I believed was the right decision to make.”
Although Ashwin still believes in his own call, MS Dhoni came up to Ashwin after the match and shared what could have been done to save the match. “After the game, MS Dhoni came to me and said, ‘You could have taken a chance in the previous ball. Probably taken a single, and let Varun Aaron slog one off the last ball’. So yeah, that’s hindsight.”
