Posted by If there’s one thing you can count on with IPL tactical trends, it’s that by the time you’ve written about one, it’s gone back the other way. We can’t really remember any particular period when the perceived value of a wicketkeeper largely hinged on his wicketkeeping though, which is where MS Dhoni seems to find himself these days
You may remember a couple of years ago, we were lauding Dhoni for being willing to go out with a whimper. We’re not saying he will. We’re just saying he’s willing to risk it and frankly hats off to the (now 43-year-old) lad.
It’s all well and good to go out on top, but to our mind it’s far braver to press on. Why not allow people to scrutinise your decline as you glide through middle age?
Because make no mistake, Dhoni has declined. He isn’t captain any more (he can’t be arsed with all that) and his batting has deteriorated to bit-part status.
The finishing touch
They call it ‘finishing’, but it’s more accurately called ‘not batting’. These days MS is only coming in if he absolutely bloody has to.
Five balls there, fifteen balls there. He tends to come in at about number eight and the full scale of his remit is to hopefully welly two or three sixes.
When you’re only ever likely to face a handful of balls, there’s a pretty low ceiling on what you can possibly achieve. If Dhoni nails a couple and makes 12 runs, he’s within his rights to chalk that up as a full and worthwhile batting contribution.
He trains for exactly this nowadays; specific training for a specific job. This is very admirable and professional, but it doesn’t change the fact that the job he’s shaping himself for is not a particularly influential one. While ‘finishing’ can mean the difference between victory and defeat in the closest of games, really it’s your colleagues up the order who’ve been entrusted with the more significant task, which is trying to prevent the game from ever getting close in the first place.
Basically, a finisher can seem significant, but in practice he very rarely is.
MS Dhoni is no longer, in any meaningful sense, a batter. Therefore, he is a wicketkeeper.
Keep on keeping on
We don’t follow the IPL too closely, but from what we’ve seen any decline in Dhoni’s keeping is far less marked.
Honestly, he still looks bang on.
Many, many years ago – 2008 to be precise – we wrote a quick thinking-out-loud sort of a piece wondering whether T20 might prove the unlikely saviour of the art of wicketkeeping. At the time, the more widespread assumption was that as the format was all about quick runs, teams would favour non-keepers who could score quickly over more skilful glovers.
We saw it the other way. A lot of wicketkeepers barely get to bat, but they’re potentially involved in every ball in the field. A magical stumping can turn a game. Standing up to the stumps to a quicker bowler can limit the batter’s options.
It still gets talked about sometimes, but our feeling is that it’s never really panned out like that. (We don’t follow franchise competitions particularly closely, so please let us know in the comments if we’re dead wrong about that.) The consensus seems to be that there isn’t a colossal downside to settling for a competent stopper as your wicketkeeper, if only because the ball so rarely makes it through to them.
Even so, you still get odd moments don’t you?
Spinning top
As well as fielding a player who is bordering on being a specialist keeper, Chennai Super Kings do two other things that were, in the earliest days of T20, considered terrible unmodern things that would probably cease to happen in the fullness of time. (We’re talking in the really, really early days).
Firstly, they pick a load of old players, like Dhoni, R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja. Secondly, they play a load of spinners.
We were watching clips of Noor Ahmed bezzing the ball in at significant speed last week and we immediately thought, “that is a bowler who really benefits from a good keeper.”
In one clip, Dhoni stumped Suryakumar Yadav – the man we call “Say” – who is always a good person to dismiss in a T20. Ahmed took four wickets in that game. Throw in another eight overs from Ashwin and Jadeja and Dhoni’s potentially a busy man. We’re slightly surprised he doesn’t stand up to the stumps for Sam Curran to be honest. Feels like he’s missing a trick there. Maybe if he was still only 42, he’d be doing just that.
Wicketkeeping unquestionably matters in T20, but it can matter more in some teams than others. Even while we’ve been writing this article, Dhoni has stumped Phil Salt.
Measured as a wicketkeper, the man’s doing a job.
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I’d love to see some data on whether a good wicket keeper can make a difference in a T20. I remember watching a fun day of cricket where the recently retired likes of Ian Bell and Kumar Sankagarra turned up for some made up for the weekend T20 teams in Hong Kong. Was excited to see Sankagarra keep but don’t remember him touching the ball once all the time I was watching him.
Ha!
Dhoni came in at 9 today behind Jadeja and Ashwin, and promptly smashed 30 off 16 in a game that was already long lost. Maybe they shouldn’t actually hide him quite so much.