KOLKATA: As he slowly but surely walks into the sunset, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, is making sure that unlike the first part of his career, his last few steps are well-rehearsed and well-timed. It may be argued that Wednesday evening is hardly the best time to make big-ticket announcement, but then when the man in question happens to be India’s most successful cricket captain, even Father Times pauses.
That Dhoni will never lead India on a cricket field is hard to fathom, for, irrespective of whether he was donning Test match ‘whites’ or limited-overs ‘blues’, Dhoni was, and will always, remain a warrior. The fearlessness with which he approached battles made him a natural leader. It was only after three years that Dhoni was entrusted with the job of leading a bunch of ‘T20 rookies’ in the World Cup’s shortest version in 2007, but Dhoni was already a leader of the emerging group of players in the dressing room by then.
Dhoni’s quest for stardom began from the tribal hinterland of Ranchi, passed through Kharagpur, which boasts of the world’s longest railway platform, and the Kolkata Maidan before he landed in the Indian dressing room.
