The Magician

Well everybody have given names to Dhoni be it Iceman, Captain Cool… etc. But it was all related to how Dhoni behaved in the field or how his temperament was in close matches, but the real name of MS Dhoni is still hidden… he is the Master Magician…. Let me prove it.

1. The Magicians View

In a magic art there are two views, one the  “Audience View” which the whole world get to see on stage and the other one known as “Magician’s view”, which is visible only to the magician. Dhoni is one of the few captains in world cricket, who gets this view in a place where he usually stands in the cricket field, right behind the stumps. When the whole word watches a bowler who runs straight into the pitch, the magician stands behind the stumps calculating, the bounce in the track, line of the delivery, field settings and most importantly the batsmen`s weakness which is not visible to anyone in the field. It`s from this position where all the tricks are shown to the world. 

2. Tricks up his sleeve

The art of a magician is to surprise the audience and his potential opponents who are in his business. Dhoni`s tricks are numerous and being the skipper of his team for so many years, Can anyone in the opposition outguess Dhoni`s next move? Let me ask a much simpler question “Can anyone guess the batting order of CSK?” As per IPL2013 even Ashwin can open the innings which even Ashwin would not have thought in the wildest of his dreams.

3. The Prestige

If you have seen Chris Nolan`s “The Prestige” you can understand what I am speaking about, for the ignorant people let me quote from the movie….

“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige".

This is one part which Dhoni has mastered. Consider the final matches all the 3 ICC tournaments which Dhoni has captained.

1.   The Pledge 

In all the 3 matches “The Pledge” that was shown to the fans was the trophy, by getting into the finals Dhoni had already shown “The Pledge” to the audience.

2. The Turn

In midway of all these 3 matches, India was in a condition where the Pledge i.e. the Trophy has disappeared and India was in verge of losing those matches (Misbah`s innings in WT20, India losing crucial middle order wickets in WC2011 and Bopara`s innings in CT13)

3. The Prestige

In this hardest part Dhoni not only surprised the audience but even the opponents. Joginder Sharma in WT20, his own innings coming ahead of Yuvi in WC2011, Ishant Sharma in CT13 are some of his Prestige acts which brought back the trophy which had disappeared in the midway.  

4. Rabbit out of the Hat

You cannot be a magician unless you can pull the rabbit out of the hat. Dhoni has done this time and again in lot of matches. Do you think getting wickets out of Joginder Sharma and Ishant Sharma is normal!!! 

All that the world observes from Dhoni is his calmness, cool character but seldom do they know that these are all decoys. The magic happens elsewhere, you won't find it because, you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled by Magician Dhoni.

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IPL – RAT Race?

Before the ICC 20-20 World Cup began in England last year, Cricket Analysts were predicting India to be one of the strong contenders. The reason they cited was India was the defending champion and the experience in IPL. The first reason sounds logical, but the reasoning with respect to IPL experience is not convincing. The entire hullabaloo surrounding IPL may give an impression that IPL is one of the premier T20 tournaments, but deep inside it’s just a domestic league with some national and international players. And the cricket played over there can’t surely be termed as world class.

Try to get the winners of IPL to play a T20 series with an international team I’m not asking to play with Australia or South Africa or Pakistan. A T20 series with Newzealand or West Indies will surely tell the differences between an international class of cricket and IPL standards. Then how come IPL has such a fan following, revenues, and the players are so really interested that they need a separate window for this event.

The reason is pretty simple; if you are a true cricket fan a match between Australia and Bangladesh would be pretty boring given both the teams play according to their standards. But a match between Zimbabwe and Bangladesh would be really interesting as both teams play a similar standard of cricket. This is what is exactly happening in the IPL, all the teams that are not so world class competes against each other playing a similar standard of cricket.

We almost had 3 versions of the league and except for Yusuf Pathan and Ravindra Jadeja no one was really able to make a consistent international appearance. As a matter of fact the Indian selectors give a lot of importance to the runs made in other domestic tournaments like Ranji trophy, Duleep trophy, Challenger series... etc. And most of the new debutants both in ODI and in Test cricket like Abimanyu Mithun, Sudeep Tyagi, S.Badrinath and Murali Vijay have made to the national team because of their performance in other domestic tournaments and not IPL. This speaks volume about the league that claims it to be playing the most competitive T20 cricket.

The reason why this League is so famous because India is filled with lot of Cricket maniacs who can spend their useful time in watching lot of cricket and some like me writing blogs about it. And also there is Bollywood twist to it where the owners sit in the dug outs along with their team which I feel is 100% nonsense. What can a team owner sitting in a dug out can possibly do rather that getting the TV camera`s attention. Can they provide a useful tip on field placing or on which bowler to bowl in a crucial situation? Have you ever seen Owners of Man U or Chelsea sitting in their dug outs? Some owners claim they cheer the team, trust me a team owner can only add pressure rather than cheering the team. These extra curricular activities of the team owners do help to get the crowd attention and their endorsements thereby increasing revenues.

The final word is IPL is a Rat Race as some wise men said long back that, “Even if you win a Rat race you are still a Rat”. It’s a jungle out there and you need Tigers and not Rats.

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