The man who would be king

If you like honest appraisals of sportstars, you have to read what Aakash Chopra has to say about MS Dhoni on his (Aakash Chopra's) blog.

The formatting of the page leaves a lot to be desired and the article itself is a little clunky to read, but it is well worth it. It is as splendid an inside look of Dhoni before he became Dhoni as any I've read. This is exactly the type of inside stuff I look for from cricketer-writers.

Here's a brief excerpt to whet your appetite.

He (Dhoni) was funny and very well mannered, though a little subdued to begin with, typical of people coming from small towns. He'd talk about his dogs and his bikes. Sriram (Sridharan Sriram), he and I used to hang out quite a lot. Since he was not in the playing XI, after his keeping stint he would bowl to batsmen in the nets. Both Sriram and I were getting a little irritated at seeing him bowling everyday, and that too, to Dinesh Karthick, his immediate competitor. So one day we told him, rather bluntly, that the idea of playing for India A is to eventually play for the country, and that his primary role is to keep the wickets and if there's any time left, he should devote it to his batting and not on providing someone else a hit. But Dhoni being Dhoni, he simply said 'अगर  आपको  भी  खेलना  है  तोह  मैं  आपको  भी  ball डाल  दूंगा ' (if you also want to have a hit, I'll bowl at you as well). May be it was thanks to his bowling efforts in the nets that Karthick batted beautifully in the games he played and was called up for the Indian team in the middle of our A tour. 

Since my hand was still injured, I was staying away from active cricket and spent a lot of time on the sidelines working on my fitness. I would run for a long time at the end of the day's play with the reserves. I rarely had Dhoni for company as he always despised my running round and round in circles around the ground. He would do some keeping drills instead besides sending down a few more balls in the nets. One day I was doing shuttle running and suddenly found Dhoni game for it. Now I take a lot of pride in my stamina and endurance and was pretty sure that Dhoni would be very poor competition. But he gave me a run for my money. I was a little zapped and asked him if he's been running around in the gym or something to keep his stamina right up there. To that he answered that slow running is boring and that is why he stays away from it, but short sprints is something that he enjoys doing and I think he's naturally gifted in that aspect too. I argued that to play the longer version of the game one must develop stamina by running long distances, but he innocently retorted that he finds the longer version a little boring too.