The man who sculpted Indian cricket

Mahendra Singh Dhoni has always had a unique fancy - he likes to develop individuals and careers. For the most part of his career as captain of the Indian cricket team, Dhoni spent time in 'throwing the long rope', hoping the man at the other end of it would grab on and climb up. It was only fitting then that the skipper stepped down as captain at a time when he felt his ward had grown confident enough to take on the mantle.

Criticize his captaincy all you like; you still can't overlook the fact that he's among India's most successful. There was a time when MS Dhoni was the world's best batsman, keeper and captain - separately and together. Not to mention, he is, today, and has been for most part of his career, arguably the most stressed out sportsman in the world. Roger Federer feels the pinch of expectations, but that's an individual sport; you can always turn a deaf ear to the critics. Perhaps Lionel Messi, who always seems a different player when he's in Argentina's blue and white? No, Messi rarely ever plays for Argentina, unlike Dhoni who plays all year round. As hard as one can think, it's near impossible to find an athlete even in today's mad world who needs to answer a billion people, lives in front of the cameras everyday and plays three roles in one, all year round. Yet, so does Dhoni.

The Sculptor: Dhoni is world cricket's greatest statesman

But what's MS Dhoni's greatest legacy as a Test captain? Was it the day he defeated Sri Lanka at home to take India to the summit of Test cricket for the first time in history? Or is it his invincibility at home that has done enough to overshadow his overseas vulnerabilities and make him the most successful captain in Indian Test history? Neither, I say. It's his ability to sculpt careers and individuals. The best of leaders aren't those who pile up stats and factoids; they are those who build individuals, societies and nations. Think of Abraham Lincoln, the man who held America together even while its economy wasn't as large and dominant as it is today. Or think of Martin Luther King, the man whose immortal words continue to inspire, despite the difficulties that his community faced back in his day. Closer to the cricket field, think of Steve Waugh, the man who built, by the sweat of his brow, the most legendary playing squad cricket has ever seen.

It is therefore that I prefer to weigh the contributions of MS Dhoni, not by his win percentage, but by his handling of a team that was under transition. When India became the best Test team in the world, it had the services of legends like Dravid, Tendulkar and Laxman. Dhoni's true test began when the legends stepped down. In my view, he came up trumps. On innumerable occasions, critics (me included) questioned his unwavering faith in a handful of young men, even as they stumbled and failed. Rahane, Kohli and Rohit Sharma all had forgettable starts to their career. Yet, Dhoni threw them the 'long rope'. It took ages before the rope was finally accepted and his wards started finding their feet. While at one point in time India's young batsmen barely managed 200 in overseas Test innings, they now cross 400 far more consistently. That is a telling tale.

Unfortunately, while he was immersed in fixing the batting, Dhoni let the bowling slip. Ishant Sharma seems a fair exception - yet another example of a young man who held on to the 'long rope'. But by and large, India's bowling attack today is probably the worst in the world, outside of Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. That has hurt Dhoni's ability to win overseas Test matches. Batsmen can win you one-day games and T20s. The best they can do in a five-day game is secure a draw. No side wins, or deserves to win, unless it takes 20 wickets. Many would point out Dhoni's perceived lack of aggression in Test match cricket. But one can't have a heavy slip cordon or men in catching when the bowler lacks control over the ball.

But perhaps Dhoni's greatest quality of all is his statesmanship. In a country like India, diplomacy and statesmanship is a hard game. A billion people are watching you keenly all the time. But Dhoni, to his credit, hasn't been unduly noisy, keeping pesky journalists where they deserve to be and locking up dirty linen in the most obscure cupboard. We Indian citizens love noisy cricket captains, news anchors and Prime Ministers. But seldom do we remember that noise is not an integral part of game plans, television debates or government policies. Noise tends to fire people up, yes; but people who are fired up often set other things on fire. And as is often noticed these days, that is purely destructive.

India's Test team will remember MS Dhoni is a freak. Men like him aren't supposed to succeed at this game. Nor are they expected to be common. When you think of long-time captains, you think of them as folks who just don't look the part while playing under someone else. Just as well, when you think of great team players, you never imagine them as great captains. But Dhoni was a rare man who fit remarkably well both as captain and as player. If you ask the young minions he has groomed in this Indian side over the last few months, you'd find that they've just lost a father figure. When Dhoni finally retires from all international cricket, he'd go down in history is a freakish legend, if he hasn't already.

'Home advantage' - way too homely?

"What does one make of Pakistan cricket?" asked a thrilled, yet equally flummoxed Pakistani supporter, after his national team trounced Australia in the Emirates. One might pose that sort of question about anything 'Pakistan'. But here's the cricketing story. Only recently, Pakistan had lost their premier spinner to alleged chucking. On either side of that incident, they kept rotating their captains around like a game of roulette (on one occasion, when Shahid Afridi was asked if he was Pakistan's captain, his reply was "I don't know"). 

But then, all of a sudden, an unknown spinner turned up and proved to be even more lethal than the man he was meant to fill in for. Their captain - their most recent captain at the time of this writing, anyway - a man who had apparently sworn to stonewall his way into retirement, ratcheted up both the fastest 50 and the fastest 100 in one single historic Test innings. And the next thing you know, Australia had been soundly whacked 2-0 in a Test series they never seemed to have turned up for. History was made, and without so much as a fuss. Pakistan had beaten Australia in a bilateral tournament for the first time since 1994.

Home Sweet Home: Conditions were favorable; Pakistan won

It's yet too early to say if Pakistani cricket has really taken off. The only way to describe Pakistani cricket is - 'mercurial'. And nothing mercurial is ever predictable. But the outcome of this series certainly was, at the start. You might not have expected a trouncing of this sort, but everyone knew that Australia were in for a tough time. They were climbing up a hill, Pakistan were strolling along a flat plain. It was all down to 'home advantage'. Sure, this wasn't really Pakistan, but anyone who's been to the UAE would know that that country is nothing but 'little Pakistan'. And to be sure, the pitches were either bone dry or dead flat - nothing like the sort of green meadow Mitchell Johnson would have been hungry for.

Pakistan made good use of 'home' conditions. Much like everyone else in world cricket has been doing of late. Save for Australia and South Africa, who pretty much have similar conditions in their respective countries, every other bilateral series of note in recent times has been woefully lopsided in favor of the home team. India got thrashed in England recently. New Zealand pounded the West Indies at home. India then came back home and walloped the West Indies. And they've only begun their run of carnage on the Sri Lankans now. Pakistan, of course, have now beaten the hapless Australians.

Overall, it's been an absolute carnival for whoever is playing at home - except maybe Bangladesh, but they're yet outside the big league, so they're excused. To the spectator, it has been dour. Odds at the bookie have been discouraging too for those who bet, sensibly, in favor of the home team. Have home conditions gotten far too homely? Or are cricketers just bad tourists and better sightseers in the modern game?

In the previous decade or two, world cricket was used to seeing a dominant bully on the global stage - Australia. Ricky Ponting's Australia were the real deal. Hosts or tourists, setting or chasing, they started favorites, anywhere, anytime. Australia's dominance encouraged sides to push their own bar higher and higher, relentlessly, because the 'Roos could never be caught up with. One of those who greatly benefited from this exercise were Sourav Ganguly's Indian team. Traditionally poor at touring foreign lands, India suddenly found ways to win Test matches in England, Australia and South Africa.

But post 2008, Australia has been on the decline, and there's little doubt about it now, if there ever was. The likes of Matthew Hayden, Adam Gilchrist, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne were never going to be replaced. Sadly, no one else in the world has really taken up the baton from the Aussies either. While South Africa have shown little glimpses of dominance from time to time, they still are vulnerable in the subcontinent, in a way that Ponting's side seldom was. 

In result, world cricket has turned into a game of quid pro quo - you beat me at your place and I'll beat you at mine. Scheduling has helped too. Teams often play each other back-to-back, once in each side's backyard. Tight schedules further mean that there's little time to spend in adapting to foreign conditions. Series are often restricted to two Tests - fit for a world of business-like globetrotters.

But could pitches be held accountable too? Of late, one gets the sense that 'home advantage' is turning far too skewed. In India, pitches are so flat that no ODI total less than 350 is even worth defending. In Australia, South Africa and England too, pitches have gotten greener and trickier than before - although, admittedly, to a degree lesser than the skew observable in the subcontinent.

There seems no outright reason for the heavy lopsidedness of contests in world cricket these days. Some would even contest that it exists. But there's little doubt, however, that things have gotten terribly dreary and unexciting in the world of cricket.

What's the fuss over coaching?

India's last cricketing tour to England saw the visitors slump to a 4-0 blanking. The stats are less unforgiving on MS Dhoni this time; India lost 3-1 (one game drawn). So surely the last tour was more horrendous? No. As painful as 2011 may have been, the Test series this year far supersedes it in agony. For one, this time, India played a team they expect to last. The last squad had several veterans who were on a pre-retirement sojourn. They were respected, but old. These guys are young; they won the Champions Trophy last year in the same country and have made as much money in a few months as their forerunners made in entire careers.

The agony isn't that India lost; it is that India lost meekly. Following the second Test at Lord's, pundits from across the cricketing world hailed India's win as the country's finest ever in overseas conditions. It came on a tough pitch, in the worst of conditions and despite the most unfortunate toss defeat in fresh memory. No one expected the young Indian kids to win that game. But they did, and they did handsomely. Team India's hunger to fight in that game was typified by Ravi Jadeja's belligerent blitzkrieg in the second innings and Bhuvneshwar Kumar's inexplicable batting prowess.

Detached: Fletcher needs to instill commitment in his wards

But all of that was washed away as quickly and astonishingly as it was first produced. The next time India set foot on London, a fortnight or so later, they found themselves playing catch up. England had jumped to a 2-1 lead from 0-1, and half a captain, down. The preceding game had ended in just under three days. India had won as many sessions since Lord's as England had won Test matches.

Nothing changed in the last three days of the series. In five sessions of play, England had completed the most dramatic turnaround in Test match cricket for as far as the mind can recall. Their captain was now the toast of the town. A monster by name 'Moeenalitharan' was doing its rounds in cricket clubs all across England. And little-fancied Jos Buttler had successfully cemented his place as England's first-choice wicketkeeper (God save Matt Prior now).

There are two things particularly disconcerting about India's abject surrender to England on either side of the day commemorating the former's independence from the latter. One, they surrendered without a whimper. Two, their batsmen kept committing the same old follies time and again, almost as if poking to the slip cordon and letting the ball slip through bat-and-pad were standard practice in professional batsmanship.

What's worse, it all happened under the stoic watch of Duncan Fletcher - the man whom Nasser Hussain often calls 'the best batting coach' he's ever seen. To be fair, Fletcher won England a historic Ashes series in the same country. But then, how has he now overseen 7 Test defeats in 9 games from the opposite dressing room?

Alright, India don't have Andrew Flintoff or Steve Harmison. Neither Shami nor Bhuvi give the batsmen enough nightmares on most days. And after all, what good is a coach when he can't play himself? Isn't it the men in the middle who win or lose?

A coach is more or less unnecessary when you have men like Dravid and Tendulkar playing in the middle. But while on tour with a bunch of inexperienced kids finding their feet in international cricket, the coach's inputs are obviously far more important and influential. Added trouble with young Indian cricketers today is the fact that they make more money than anyone else their age and in their profession anywhere else in the world. Many have reason to doubt that they're over-addicted to the mad rush of limited-overs cricket, and lack the interest and temperament to play good old Test match cricket in its place. Young Indian cricketers love being impulsive and brash - dominating the bowler or taking blinders in the outfield, rather than stonewalling at the wicket or grabbing sharp ones in the slip cordon. But if Fletcher can't teach his wards the importance of Test cricket or the nitty-gritties of playing it, what use is 'the best batting coach' going to be?

To be fair again to Fletcher, teaching Indian cricket's young guns can never be easy. These guys have seen far too much glamour way too early in their lives. Putting in the hard yards doesn't come all that naturally. And then, there is the culture gap to deal with too - something India's previous foreign coaches have often attested to themselves.

All that said and done, old man Duncan still has a job to do. Will he be India's Dumbledore or will he be the silent stoic?

Tale of Two Captains

India's tour of England this summer is made rather fascinating by its timing. If you had to pick out two heavyweight cricket teams in the world today who are both struggling with recent history, you'd probably go with India and England. No other cricket team in the world, save perhaps Australia at times, has to contend with as much media scrutiny as these two, and it isn't just on the field; the standing of - and relationship between - the BCCI and the ECB is uncannily similar to what had been of Kennedy's America and Khruschev's Soviet Union in the 1960s. To put more blatantly, this is the Cold War of world cricket.

On the field, you find two teams in painful transition. India's legacy of relative overseas success under Sourav Ganguly has evaporated following the post-World Cup debacles in England and Australia (and later, in South Africa and New Zealand, where MS Dhoni's men failed to tally much in terms of results). The young boys of Indian cricket, to many, seem over-addicted to T20 cricket and incapable still of filling the big boots of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman (to be fair to them, those are some king-sized boots).

Tactful Twosome: Cook has it harder than Dhoni

England too have had their share of ill fate recently. Their last Test win came in Chester-le-Street in August last year. Incidentally, that capped off a successful Ashes series which seemed to suggest that England were here to dominate - and for long. But as destiny would have it, only a few months later, all that ambition was washed away on the return tour to Australia - an odyssey that ended with the tourists losing not just all 5 games but also two of their premium batsmen and lone specialist spinner.

In many ways, even the two captains seem to have much in common. Much like MS Dhoni, Alastair Cook faces intense media interrogation back in England, with the mikes and cameras following him everywhere. And much like Dhoni, Cook proves to be ever reclusive in the spotlight, soft-spoken and diplomatic in press conferences and almost stoic in the face of journalistic aggression. Cook and Dhoni don't quite follow the old-school Australian principle of 'give 'em as good as you get', both preferring rather to stay away from the whole ordeal as far as possible. Expectedly then, all of the 'inter-personal battle' hype prior to the start of the series was created and sustained entirely by the media, with players from neither side choosing to add any venom to the contest (surprisingly, even James Anderson's reported punch at Ravindra Jadeja in the dressing rooms of Nottingham hasn't quite escalated to too much).

There are other striking similarities between both Dhoni and Cook. Both seem to enjoy captaining younger players more than the senior ones. Under Dhoni's watch, following the retirement of all the great legends, other stalwarts including Gambhir, Sehwag, Yuvraj and Zaheer have failed to find rehabilitation in the side, although the performances of their supposed replacements (Dhawan for Sehwag and Gambhir, Jadeja for Yuvraj, Ishant for Zaheer) have been far from encouraging. Cook, on his part, has drawn considerable flak for the mismanagement of Pietersen, Trott and Swann - the casualties of the Australia tour. And only to add, the seniors in his current squad, including Ian Bell, Matt Prior and himself, seem far removed from the enthusiasm of the young guns.

It's well possible that what seems like the mishandling of seniors stems from the fact that both Dhoni and Cook are leading sides under generational transition. And unlike the Australian public, the Indian and English followers are less willing to see a senior veteran get thrown out of the squad unceremoniously. But Cook has a larger problem - his own authority within the England team. With the captain's own performances turning ever more disastrous with each passing day, seniors within the England side (starting with Pietersen whilst he was there) are beginning to question the leadership credentials of Alastair Cook and whether he should be captain at all. Unfortunately, it's harder for Alastair Cook to convince his superiors and teammates that he is a deserving captain than it is for MS Dhoni. For one, Cook isn't a multiple World Cup winning captain. Second, his task is made much harder by the fact that he's an opening batsman. Opening batsmen are more susceptible to excessive scrutiny than middle-order batsmen, for the obvious reason that they are the most visible. If MS Dhoni is running through a miserable patch as a batsman, he can still hide behind the force of a fairly formidable and star-studded top-order, or even behind his own showings as a world-class wicketkeeper. Alastair Cook doesn't have that luxury.

It does seem like the England team are expecting a bit too much out of their captain. On the one hand, everyone expects him to lead a team undergoing a difficult phase of transition. On the other, they expect him to do it while his own authority is openly under question. If Cook doesn't find form soon and restore faith in those under and above him, England are headed for a tumultuous World Cup campaign Down Under next year. Perhaps the wiser option would be to identify and groom a more suitable leader before that tournament.

India's Golden Era of Pace?

How often do you see Indian fast bowlers dominate headlines during a T20 tournament in the subcontinent? IPL-7 is breaking all those traditions. Put in a nutshell, this season has been all about overseas batsmen and Indian bowlers. Glenn Maxwell, David Miller, Dwayne Smith and JP Duminy have all dominated proceedings so far. But on the other side of the pitch are Varun Aaron, Sandeep Sharma and Bhuvneshwar Kumar - all giving them a tougher fight than expected. Young Yuzvendra Chahal has been a revelation so far, as has been Pravin Tambe (a man 20 years older than his RCB rival) who now even has a hat-trick to his credit at the evergreen age of 42.

Fast and Furious: Varun Aaron has shone for RCB

But Indian pace bowling has been a story here of its own. Pace is a commodity erstwhile unknown in Indian bowling circles. Indian fast bowling has always been more about swing at medium pace than ferocious speed. This isn't the land of the Joel Garners and Andy Roberts; it's the home of Venkatesh Prasad and Zaheer Khan. But Varun Aaron is sending history for a toss. Everyone always knew Aaron was amongst the fastest Indians ever, but Indian pace bowlers, unlike the Australians and South Africans, often trade accuracy for speed. That was often part of the critique against Aaron as well. Not this year though. In 7 games so far, Varun Aaron has bagged 12 wickets at 16 runs a piece. He hasn't been all that expensive either, conceding a relatively moderate 7 runs per over. All that done consistently at 150 kph - a truly un-Indian return.

Aaron isn't alone. At the top of the wicket-takers list (at the time of this writing) sits the usually classy Bhuvneshwar Kumar with 15 scalps in 8 games (and a ridiculous economy rate of 5.50). Bhuvneshwar has generally been the saving grace of whichever team he plays for. When Chris Gayle destroyed Pune last season in his 175-run knock, Bhuvneshwar was the only Pune Warrior to walk off the field with his head held high. That confidence has helped him again this year, taking the new ball alongside Dale Steyn and making up for the lack of runs from the Sunrisers' illustrious top order.

Second to Bhuvi on the same list is Mohit Sharma - CSK's find from last year. Mohit Sharma has gone for nearly 8 runs per over, but that's only because MS Dhoni has had the confidence to throw him at the batsmen towards the end of an innings. The fact that Mohit has gone for less runs while picking up more wickets than his more experienced compatriot Ben Hilfenhaus speaks volumes of the man's growing stature in the game.

But perhaps the real find of the season here is a certain Punjabi called Sandeep Sharma. When KXIP walked out at the end of the auction, everyone saw their team as the 'batting unit of the season' with Mitchell Johnson to boot. The batting has fired (and how!), but Johnson has often taken the boot from opposition batsmen so far. Sandeep Sharma, by contrast, has picked up 13 wickets in just 6 games - and Chris Gayle and Virat Kohli twice at that. Sandeep isn't express fast either, but he's got nippy swing - perhaps the more Indian characteristic to have.

India tour England in July this year. The last time India went to England, they came back blanked. A lot has happened since (including another whitewash in Australia and more trouble in New Zealand) but perhaps the one constant in Indian cricket chats is the nagging problem of poor pace bowling. India are dominant at home where their batsmen chase down anything the opposition throws at them on tracks that are better flattened than the national highways. But when overseas, the test gets sterner. Of course, performances in the maverick format of T20 cricket can never be a guarantee for success at the highest level in the longest form of the game. But rarely has Indian pace bowling been at the receiving end of accolades for boasting talent. India now seems to have that strength in the reserve - with the pace of Umesh Yadav and Varun Aaron, the control and bounce of Mohammed Shami, the swing of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and the freshness of Sandeep and Mohit Sharma.

Team India's greatest trouble all along has been an unwillingness to penalize consistently poor performances from established players. Think of Ishant Sharma who, despite the odd great spell in Test match cricket, has done little to merit favors over the young men oozing talent below him. It's alright throwing the long rope to a player. But each time you do that, a potentially great player under him is losing out. Team India needs to manage its human resources better.

Australia's Tryst with Failure

When was the last time an Australian cricket team got sent off in the group stages of a World Cup tournament? When was the last time an Australian cricket team considered a win against Bangladesh their consolation prize? Twenty20 cricket does strange things to long-standing reputations, as George Bailey's men recently found out. With 3 losses in 4 games, the Baggy Greens are gone even before the semis started.

Perhaps it was Mitchell Johnson's absence that made the Australians so insipid on the field. After all, it was the 'Enforcer' who played the largest part in their Ashes whitewash not too long ago. But when you look more closely, you can't even compare that Ashes campaign with the WT20. Australia, like a lot of others, play different players in different formats. The side that came to Bangladesh a couple of weeks ago came without, not just Johnson, but also Clarke, Harris and Lyon. Indeed, Australia have been rather sceptical about the adaptability of their own players lately.

It's not hard for an Australian side to find inspiration. Few sides in world cricket have the kind of legacy they have. For over a decade, they dominated world cricket across formats, conditions and continents. A number of those who represented the country over that period in time went down as all-time legends, filling up history books and cricketing folktales. What was so different about them that made them so efficient?

The Invincibles: No Aussie team for a while will emulate them

It's in fact a couple of significant factors:

#1) Unparalleled talent: The Aussie side of the 2000s was made of men who set benchmarks in their respective fields. When one thinks of becoming a world-class wicketkeeper today, he takes inspiration from Adam Gilchrist. When one thinks of batting heroes, he invariably considers Ricky Ponting after Sachin Tendulkar. When one learns the art of pace bowling, he strives to achieve the standards of Glenn McGrath. When one takes up spin bowling, he looks up to Shane Warne. Put all those people in a single team. That's the one Ponting was fortunate enough to lead.

#2) Well-defined playing roles: Very rarely did you find the Australians mix and match their playing squad in the 2000s. The team sheet was largely known even before the tour began. That's because every man in that squad knew exactly what was required of him, and all that he ever did was play that role - and play it to perfection. Contrast that with what the Aussies do today. The Australian batting order goes through more shuffling with each passing game than a deck of cards in the casino. To the player, it's like a change of profession everyday.

#3) Hunt in pairs: One of the most striking features I noticed in the Aussie side of old is how they played in pairs. When you think of that Australian side, you almost never think of one single player without associating another man as his sidekick of sorts. Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting and Damien Martyn, Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee (or Shane Warne at times), Michael Hussey and Michael Clarke. One man often played in tandem with the other, their roles perfectly complementing each other. It's a trait few sides in modern cricket have mastered.

Granted, it's almost impossible for any future generation of cricketers to do what the Australia of the 2000s did. Seldom does there come a time when all your best talent as a nation is fitted into a single generation. When all that is exhausted, you spend the next few years searching in the hay for replacements that are hard to find. And in the process, you feel unsettled, confused and anxious. Poor old Bailey must only be moaning the words of Caius Cassius now - "Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!"

The Mysteries of Triumph

What is "bad form"? Perhaps the finest description of the phrase came from the inimitably subtle Ian Chappell - "When things go wrong, they go wrong horribly, and seemingly forever." But then, it seems, even the reverse of that statement is just as true. 

Take two contrasting stories now - in the three years since his side lifted the World Cup (fittingly at home), Mahendra Singh Dhoni's Indian side have only pulled off one solitary Test win on foreign soil. That came at good old Kingston against the bumbling West Indies. That West Indies tour was followed up by a long transit in England. While India landed in the UK as the invincible world number one, they left having surrendered the Crown to their old colonial rulers. The England tour was soon followed by one to Australia, a few Tests at home, another tour to South Africa and now, New Zealand. In each of those countries - save at home - India were inostensibly blanked, and how.

Watching the Heavens Fall: Dhoni must reconjure belief

The second story is that of a certain Queenslander called Mitchell Johnson. In the space of mere months, Mitchell Johnson has gone from being the laughing stock of the galaxy (think of what the Barmy Army did to him during his last Ashes tour to England) to the next big thing in fast bowling circles since Jeffrey Thomson. For weeks, he tortured a hapless English side in different corners of Australia. The war was so bad for the Poms that their casualties list contained grander stars than the residual side it left behind - Jonathan Trott (who turned his back early), Graeme Swann, Kevin Pietersen and nearly Captain Cook himself. One might have been excused for thinking Johnson's carnage would be over once the Ashes was done. But the tornado has only just reached South Africa and Ryan McLaren is already nursing a wounded head. This man seems like he can do no wrong. And he's destroying careers around the world too.

Johnson, they say, has rediscovered himself after having gone through a 'shock therapy' with the great Dennis Lillee. I don't know about the 'shock', but there certainly seems to have been a lot of 'therapy'. Lillee put him through some grind, in trying to iron out his technical flaws - from his wrist position, to his leap and even his fox-like canter to the crease. But was it simply the technical training that did Johnson so much good, or was it more the confidence he gained out of getting the final thumbs-up from an all-time legend?

Sport is played in the mind, they say. And if one were to go by how the Indian captain has been leading his troops on foreign soil, confidence seems the only important 'technical' ingredient a professional player would ever need. Going by his words at press conferences and post-match interviews, MS Dhoni seems to have lost that faith in his players while overseas. With each passing game, all that Dhoni has been saying is "we have been improving" - almost like a class teacher patting the back of his under-par student who is striving hard. Thus, when MS Dhoni walks in for the coin toss in Durban, Auckland or London, he isn't thinking about winning. He's thinking about making sure he doesn't lose. And in trying so hard not to lose, Dhoni has forgotten how to win. Gone are the days when the Indian skipper said, "we're here to enjoy the game and give it our best" (as he did say over the course of his maiden World T20 win in 2007). It's no more about enjoying the game for the world's most stressed out and grey-haired sportsman. Leading India is now about overseeing an underconfident bunch of kids "improve" under his weary and exasperated eyes. Only so do you find India lose a game that has all but been won, time and again, in different time zones. From Brendon McCullum's other-worldly 302 in Wellington to Faf du Plessis' marathon innings in Johannesburg, India has been winning the wrong half of the game, and failing to close it out at the end. The misery seems unending.

So what does it take to win a game? Bowling the opposition out for 105 isn't sufficient anymore. The key is belief. Does belief come before victory? If MS Dhoni could ensure that it did while in South Africa seven years ago, I'm pretty certain he still can. The skipper must now take a bolder call.