R. Ashwin, one of India’s greatest cricketers, shares his incredible journey in I Have the Streets, co-written with Sidharth Monga. Ashwin not only talks about his amazing cricket achievements but also tells the story of his struggles with health as a child, the strong support from his family, and his love for cricket growing up in the streets of Madras.
Read this exclusive excerpt to get a glimpse of Ashwin’s early cricketing days full of hard work, family sacrifices, and his deep passion for the game.
I Have the Streets | R. Ashwin, Sidharth Monga
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I am ten when Appa’s teammates at Egmore Excelsiors ask him to bring me around to play for them. I have been taking formal coaching, and my batting is coming along nicely. Appa fears I will get hit by the hard cricket ball, so he keeps resisting. I am not puny, but I don’t have the muscle mass to go with my height. With all my wheezing and vomiting bouts, I struggle to keep any food down. Two years later, he finally gives in.
At twelve, I make my Madras leagues debut for Egmore Excelsiors in the fifth division. My first kitbag is the same improvised pads-around-the-bat contraption. The bat is Appa’s Simon Tuskers, fully taped and gutted. In my second season, I have scored a century. My main utility, though, is to field at slip and short leg. I take a lot of catches. And blows, because fifth-division spinners are quite erratic with their discipline, thus endangering their short-leg fielders.
Now, instead of protecting me from the cricket ball, Appa is following the coaches’ advice that tennis-ball cricket will ruin my game. So, he tries to ration those matches for me. To help me rid myself of the fear, he installs a net in the house. The surface of the first one is quite rough, so he gets it redone to a smooth finish. During a family function at home, he asks the videographer to film me while batting. It comes back like a wedding film.
Appa throws balls at me from a close distance so that I don’t fear the thirty- to forty-year-old pros in the leagues, who can be a terror with the unpredictable bounce of the matting pitches we get in the fifth division.
Batting against them is not even the scariest part. It is the fear of letting your teammates down and getting admonished for it. The first season is really intimidating. I’m not sure know what they will say or where they will make me stand on the field. I keep fearing misfielding or dropping a catch. No matter how poorly the team has bowled, if a young kid makes a mistake on the field, that kid becomes the reason they lost. They make you run from deep midwicket to deep cover between balls. To score a hundred and compete against these men in just one year tells me I might have something in me as a cricketer.
Appa recognizes it and wants me to be tested against the best. He gets me enrolled in as many academies as he can. Some coaches he pays; others he takes favours from, using his connections. Former India wicketkeeper Bharath Reddy now handles operations at Chemplast. As the name suggests, it is a chemical company in Madras. The name doesn’t give away, though, that they field two strong teams in the higher divisions of the Madras leagues: Jolly Rovers and Alwarpet CC. He also runs his own academy, where I train.
By thirteen, I am a bit of a big dog at the Bharath Reddy Academy. Appa is tempted to get me to the seniors’ nets, among the Jolly Rovers probables, to test me. One of the quicks knocking at the Jolly Rovers door is L. Balaji, who is unplayable on matting pitches. He bowls rockets that don’t even come straight at you. His outswingers are hard to follow; his inswingers hit batters in the chest and not the pads.
The thing with Appa, though, is that he will never undermine a coach by making such a demand. A coach is almost like a senior police officer whose orders must be followed without question. The other thing about Appa is that he will not give up. When this inner conflict of his becomes apparent, Amma comes to the rescue by offering to make that call to Bharath Reddy. However, Bharath Reddy still ends up giving Appa a piece of his mind when he sees us. Facing Balaji at thirteen is a death wish, he says.
Appa is slightly bolder at the other academy, Sishya, run by P.K. Dharmalingam, who does cricket shows on TV. He is the man Kapil Dev credits with teaching him how to take catches running back and over his shoulder, the most famous one being that of Viv Richards in the 1983 World Cup final. After two months of persistence, Appa finally convinces Dharmalingam to let me bat against the senior quicks. There is no sight screen; we are on a matting surface with concrete underneath, and this big, fast bowler runs in. The first ball I face hits me in the chest, and I am down. I have to be carried out of the nets.
For a few days after the incident, I wake up in the middle of the night to see a hand near my nose and mouth. It’s Appa checking to see if I am still breathing. He feels guilty and is worried about pushing me too far. He scales it back a little but doesn’t give up on repetitions. Repetition to build muscle memory is a big thing with him. A day before I have a match, he sits on a sofa and keeps throwing balls at me. At least 200. ‘Bend that knee when you play the cover-drive.’ He has also tied a ball to a rope that hangs from the ceiling so that I can keep repeating my shots. This way, I don’t need a person to throw balls at me, nor do I need someone to run after the ball.
There is one problem, though: the ball keeps hitting the fridge before coming back to me. This fridge was gifted to Thatha by his father-in-law when it was rare for homes to have one. Thatha continues to treasure it. The fridge has become the trigger for the outpouring of all the tension between Thatha and Appa. Thatha doesn’t like Appa investing so much time, money and emotion in my cricket. Especially with my health problems.
On this one day, I am getting in a last-minute knock before a league game. As I keep hitting the fridge, tempers flare between Thatha and Appa, who cushions me from it. ‘You have no value for money. You don’t know how expensive this fridge is.’
In an attempt to shield the fridge, Appa tries to get in the way of a shot I play, but my bat swing ends at his forehead, splitting it open. Immediately, blood gushes out. The floor turns red. I freeze, drop the bat and stand there not knowing what to do.
***
Get your copy of I Have the Streets by R. Ashwin and Sidharth Monga on Amazon or wherever books are sold.
You know it’s going to get too cold to step out anyway and what’s the point of making plans you’d cancel later?
Instead, grab some oranges, a cozy mat and head to your balcony in the sun. And we don’t think we need to tell you about the companion without which your day would be horribly incomplete… A nice book, of course!
Doesn’t this seem like the perfect December day? Well, you ought to make these days happen for yourself instead of watching other people enjoy them on Instagram. Feel some of that December beauty by getting one of these beautiful and brilliant books releasing this month!
December will be cold but these books will make it warmer. So, check out these new releases, curated just for you!
Dr. Cuterus || Dr. Tanaya Narendra
Dr. Cuterus
Tanaya Narendra
No matter what kind of bits you have, the ‘private’ bits between our legs often leave us with … many feelings and many questions.
Is it big enough? Is it too big? Why is it so dark? And hairy? How are babies made? Why do periods hurt? As John Mayer so beautifully sang, your body is a wonderland, but in the land of the Kama Sutra, we often forget this. Words like vagina, clitoris, penis, scrotum tend to confound and embarrass people. Maybe even you, dear reader?
Even though everyone has a body, nobody wants to talk about it. Especially those ‘private’ bits. With so much shame and stigma, we have nowhere to go to learn and understand our bodies. This is where this book comes in-a one-stop scientific, funny, and easy to understand guide to everything you’ve always wondered about what’s ‘down there’. Or even up there! Whatever your concern, Dr Cuterus has got you covered.
Doglapan || Ashneer Grover
Doglapan
Ashneer Grover
This is the unfettered story of Ashneer Grover-the favourite and misunderstood poster boy of Start-up India.
Raw, gut-wrenching in its honesty and completely from the heart, this is storytelling at its finest. A young boy with a ‘refugee’ tag growing up in Delhi’s Malviya Nagar outpaces his circumstances by becoming a rank-holder at the pinnacle of academic excellence in India-IIT Delhi. He goes on to do an MBA from the hallowed halls of IIM Ahmedabad, builds a career as an investment banker at Kotak Investment Banking and AmEx, and is pivotal in the making of two unicorns-Grofers, as CFO, and BharatPe, as co-founder.
As a judge on the popular TV show Shark Tank India, Ashneer becomes a household name even as his life turns upside down. Controversy, media spotlight, garrulous social media chatter descend, making it difficult to distinguish fact from fiction.
Panjab || Amandeep Sandhu
Panjab
Amandeep Sandhu
In 2015, Amandeep Sandhu began an investigation that was meant to resolve the ‘hole in his heart’, his ’emptiness about matters Panjab’. For three years, he crisscrossed the state and discovered a land that was nothing like the one he had imagined and not like the stories he had heard.
Present-day Panjab prides itself on legends of its military and valorous past even as it struggles with daily horrors. The Green Revolution has wreaked ecological havoc in the state, and a decade and a half of militancy has destabilised its economy and governance. Sikhism-the state’s eclectic and syncretic religion- is in crisis, its gatekeepers brooking no dissent and giving little spiritual guidance. And Panjab has yet to recover from the loss of its other half, now in Pakistan.
This revised edition includes a chapter on the 2020-21 farmers’ struggle which proved beyond doubt that the old spirit of the land with its undercurrent of resistance to power and hegemony still beats away. The hope that Panjab’s unyielding knots can be untied continues to linger.
India in Search of Glory || Ashok
India in Search of Glory
Ashok
India and the Indians have made some progress in 75 years after Independence. The number of literates has gone up. The Indians have become healthier and their life expectancy at birth has gone up. The proportion of people below the poverty line has also halved. But the shine from the story fades when India is compared with that of the East Asian Tigers and China. It looks good but not good enough. India looks far away from the glory it seeks. This issue forms the core subject matter of this book. It tries to argue why India could not achieve more and what all it could have achieved. It paints a picture of its possible future and highlights the areas that need immediate attention.
An Island’s Eleven || Nicholas Brookes
An Island’s Eleven
Nicholas Brookes
From Sathasivam to Sangakkara, Murali to Malinga, Sri Lanka can lay claim to some of the world’s most remarkable cricketers – larger-than-life characters who thumbed convention and played the game their own way. More so than anywhere else in the world, Sri Lankan cricket has an identity. This is the land of pint-sized swashbuckling batsman, on-the-fly innovators and contorted, cryptic spinners.
An Island’s Eleven tells this story for the first time, focusing on the characters and moments that have shaped the game forever.
The Book of Dals || Pratibha Karan
The Book of Dals
Pratibha Karan
Dals have been an essential part of the human diet for centuries and they are an integral part of Indian cuisine. There are many enticing varieties of dals to choose from. Pratibha Karan, in The Book of Dals, takes you on an incredible journey to different regions of the country and shows how locally available spices and herbs, vegetables and fruit impact the food of that region. The variety of dals and dal-based dishes that you can make with these are phenomenal and mind-boggling.
This book is not limited by borders. It includes exotic dal recipes from the neighbouring countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka, and some delicious and wholesome dal-based soups too.
Grasping Greatness
Grasping Greatness
Making India a Leading Power
Since its independence in 1947, India’s leaders have sought to grasp the greatness that the country seemed destined for. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, articulated these aspirations early on but, overwhelmed by development challenges, his successors focused largely on domestic concerns rather than on global leadership. The post-1991 era saw India positioned for the first time in many decades as an economic success, suggesting that it was on the cusp of breaking out as a global player. The twenty-odd years following the 1991 reforms were heady for India. Based on the expectation that India was now poised to ascend as a major power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi-less than a year after he first took office in May 2014-expressed his desire that India assume a leading role: completing the transformation from being merely an influential entity into one whose weight and preferences are defining for international politics.
Grasping Greatness explores the various tasks pertaining to this push for eminence in world affairs. Edited by Ashley J. Tellis, Bibek Debroy and C. Raja Mohan, Grasping Greatness is an important contribution to the intellectual debates as India enters into a new era on the world stage.
4G Code to Good Health || Ishi Khosla
4G Code to Good Health
Ishi Khosla
Do you know that if you just eat the right foods, you can control your appetite and weight, remove cravings, control moods, manage sleep and much more?
Each of us today wants to be healthy and lead a balanced life. The pandemic has also taught us how important it is to have strong immunity. Yet we struggle with what to eat and what not to. Noted dietician and nutritionist Ishi Khosla says that our gut is the control panel of our health. Our forefathers knew it. That is why it is said, ‘Jaise ann vaisa mann‘ or you are what you eat. Ishi takes it a step further when she says, ‘We are not only what we eat, but what we digest-and what we DON’T eat!’ In this book, she distils decades of experience and knowledge and combines it with the wisdom of the past to provide an insight into the science of the 4 Gs-Gut, Girth, Gluten and Glucose-and their connection with each other, so we can modify our eating habits and lifestyle in a permanent manner. Remember, our bodies are forgiving and capable of healing. It’s NEVER too late!
And How Do You Feel About That? || Aruna Gopakumar, Yashodhara Lal
And How Do You Feel About That?
Aruna Gopakumar, Yashodhara Lal
Ever wondered what REALLY happens in the therapy room?
For too long, therapy has been seen as taboo in our society and is shrouded in myth–it’s only for the weak or ‘crazies’, it’s just blaming your parents, a therapist ‘only listens’ and so on. In this book, Aruna Gopakumar and Yashodhara Lal bust those myths and show you how therapy actually works.
With decades of combined experience in the field, these two therapists share fascinating stories based on their practice. You’ll meet the woman who sends secret messages to her husband during arguments; the towering tattooed man who realizes he can’t save his sister; the teenager whose life is revealed in the tale of a lonely bear; the divorced man angry with his ex-wife for starting to date again; the fiery gay young man impatient to change the world; the lady who won’t relax until her daughter is perfect; and many more.
Written with authenticity, warmth, simplicity, and lightness, And How Do You Feel About That brings you an understanding of the world of possibilities that opens up when we embark on an inner exploration – in dialogue with another.
Heart on the Edge || Novoneel Chakraborty
Heart on the Edge
Novoneel Chakraborty
Naishee Kamaraj has a special bond with her younger brother, Shravan. One day when he suddenly goes missing, everyone tells her perhaps he left of his own volition, but Naishee knew her brother better than anyone else. She fears there has been foul play. And her fears come true when she receives a second-hand phone with a video of her brother being held captive. She needs to perform some horrific activities to save her brother. As time ticks by, Naishee knows she will come out a totally different being by the end of it all . . .
Anthill || Vinoy Thomas, Nandakumar K.
Anthill
Vinoy Thomas, Nandakumar K.
Bounded by dense Kodagu forests on the south and west, and rivers on the north and east, Perumbadi, at the border between Kerala and Karnataka, has hidden itself from the world. Its very isolation has attracted varied settlers from south Kerala over the years. The first settler on this land, Kunji Varkey, was fleeing the opprobrium of getting his own daughter pregnant. Those who followed had similar shameful secrets.
Anthill, the exquisite translation from the Malayalam of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi-winning novel Puttu, is the story of common people who tried to wriggle out of the shackles of family, religion and other restraining institutions, but eventually also struggle to civilize themselves-from their beginnings of a hillbilly existence and life as a promiscuous community.
Stop Weighting || Ramya Subramanian
Stop Weighting
Ramya Subramanian
Ramya, the confident superstar and influencer of today, was once a naive and self-conscious teenager, who suffered bullying and body shaming. Just as any other insecure adolescent would, she began a long and tortuous journey to become ‘thin’. Ludicrous crash diets, intense workouts at the gym and an all-pervading sense of inferiority afflicted her for nearly a decade.
In the midst of this, Ramya was catapulted into fame at an early age when she got her first break as a television anchor. But with the media attention came all the toxic side-effects of being a celebrity. Until she decided to take back control over her life. Today, Ramya is healthier and happier than she has ever been. In Stop Weighting we find out how she achieved this.
Digging into stories, mistakes and life lessons, the book draws from the highs and lows of Ramya’s personal fitness journey with the hope that it will help others to lay the groundwork for their own. She busts the myths around fitness and helps readers establish safe and sustainable methods to become healthier without false promises or crazy diets.
The Sthory of Two Wimmin Named Kalyani and Dakshayani || R. Rajasree, Devika J.
The Sthory of Two Wimmin Named Kalyani and Dakshayani
R. Rajasree, Devika J.
The Sthory of Two Wimmin Kalyani and Dakshayani traces luminous paths of female friendship in the rural worlds of north Malabar, through the lives of two rural women, Kalyani and Dakshayani. Rebelling against the patriarchy in school at the age of six (‘Rot in ‘ell, yuh sonofabitch’, yells Dakshayani at the school master who lifted her skirt to pinch her thigh, and walks out of school, with Kalyani following
in solidarity), the two friends take on life and love. Women have no native place, they learn-but they have each other. Rajashree’s cleverly
crafted narrator pauses and plays the scenes of their struggles, pains and laughter, drawing strength from them for her own battle against
the mind-police. The bittersweet longing for one’s place of birth, the dialects of Malayalam, animals, spirits-all come alive in Rajashree’s
beautifully crafted tale, enabled by Devika’s magnificent and careful translation.
The Ultimate Sales Accelerator || Amit Agarwal
The Ultimate Sales Accelerator
Amit Agarwal
There are 7.7 billion sales owners in the world. Everyone is selling either a product, a service or an idea. The fact that everyone is selling brings its own unique challenges and possibilities.
How can high-growth companies and start-ups win clients amid unprecedented competition?
How can one close large deals virtually?
What is the higher purpose of sales?
Sharing forty-two practical business, consumer and real-life experiences, this book reveals one simple and powerful sales strategy that is the perfect answer to all the above questions. In an engaging manner, Amit provides you with a clear and easy-to-implement blueprint for this strategy.
Slow is Beautiful || Ahlawat Gunjan
Slow is Beautiful
The Ultimate Art Journal for Mindful Living Through Nature
Ahlawat Gunjan
Slow is Beautiful is an invitation to embark on a journey through mindfulness and cut through the clutter and noise of the world around you. Under the guidance of artist and visual designer Ahlawat Gunjan, you’ll learn to see, observe, reflect, and practise using artistic techniques developed through years of training to re-kindle a lost instinct. This beautiful collector’s edition prepares you to welcome a new artistic vision into your lives by building a relationship with form, colour, and composition in a uniquely accessible way. Each of the sixty easy-to-use prompts in this book is an essential step highlighted by vibrant ink and watercolour paintings inspired from nature, created and curated by the artist himself to motivate reader to draw, erase, paint, experiment, create and, most importantly, embrace their mistakes.
Such a beautiful bounty of books, which one are you adding to your TBR?
India has a relationship of great adulation with cricket, marked by unbridled excitement. The game has shaped our national consciousness in many different ways, and is the lynchpin of patriotism and camaraderie in the country – even if we have nothing in common, there will always be cricket. A colonial inheritance, cricket exists at all the coordinates of our culture, from advertisements of soft drinks with cricketers smiling through the screen to entire feature films like Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan. But we cannot talk about cricket without talking about Sachin Tendulkar. And we cannot talk about Sachin Tendulkar without talking about Vasoo Paranjape.
Ramakant Achrekar is the name we tend to associate with Sachin Tendulkar, but Vasoo Paranjape was the quiet pillar of influence who shaped the journey of the legendary batsman. Paranjape never laid any claims on his relationship with Tendulkar, and this is perhaps what makes Paranjape stand out as a mentor. There was no impulse of self-gratification in his interactions with the players, and at no point did he invest time and energy in them hoping for fame in return. This relationship was not unreciprocated; Cricket Drona tells us that Paranjape was the second person Tendulkar called when he had decided to announce his retirement from international cricket. Paranjape was bewildered about the call; he felt that he had played no significant part in Tendulkar’s life. But Tendulkar didn’t agree. ‘Sir, I know what you have done for me’, he said.
In his segment in Cricket Dhoni, Tendulkar recalls how Paranjape’s recommendation was instrumental in getting him selected for the West Indies tour. He knows Paranjape always had his best interests at heart, and from the chronicles of their interactions, this becomes amply clear. Paranjape had an eye for talent which he had carefully cultivated and which proved his words time and again. But the impact Paranjape had on Tendulkar was not limited to the pitch. There was a deep emotional influence as well, which is natural to any solid mentor-mentee relationship. In a part of his essay on Paranjape, Tendulkar discusses such an event:
“Vasoo Sir was watching this Irani Trophy match with my father. My father would never watch me play—he had this superstition that if he watched me play, I would get out early. But apparently, Vasoo Sir had convinced him to come to this game. Sir took out his 1955 Fiat and drove my father to the venue, telling him, ‘Don’t worry, he won’t get out… If your presence was reason enough for him to get out, all the schools in Mumbai would want to hire you as their principal.’ My father simply laughed and got into the car. I am forever indebted to Sir for this. My father watched me play live only on two occasions, and this was one of them. The memory makes me very emotional.”
Paranjape worked with players as individuals with their unique propensities and characteristics. “I had a very unorthodox batting grip, with both hands way down the bat’s handle”, writes Sachin. But Paranjape did not try to change this. Instead, he focused on the strategies of the game, studying the opposition, playing a good stretch at an innings, things that opened up the beauty of the game for Tendulkar. “[W]hen I worked a little more closely with him, I understood that Sachin had another great power: the power to forget. He was able to erase the memory of the previous ball or the previous innings from his immediate focus. This is the factor that separates the greats from the non-greats: the ability to shut out what’s happened in the past and stay in the present. This, to me, is one of his biggest strengths”, writes Paranjape about Tendukar, revealing how nuanced his reading of the player was. He was able to notice every detail of what makes a player stand out.
Behind every person who is outstanding in their field is the work and influence of mentors, coaches and teachers, people who shape and modulate individual talent into a set of redoubtable skills. These skills become indispensable, and become the characteristic element of people who are larger than life, whose lives and performances are scintillating to a degree where they become more than human. In more ways than one, Vasoo Paranjape drove Tendulkar to become what he is. Cricket Drona is an homage to the man who became the strength and support of many cricket legends.
[To read more about Vasoo Paranjape, order you copy of Cricket Drona here!]
“You couldn’t miss Vasoo Paranjape”, writes Dilip Vengsarkar, opening his essay on the legendary cricket coach who changed the lives of everyone who crossed paths with him in marvellous and indelible ways. Cricket Drona is a portrait of the life and times of Vasoo Paranjape, created through first-hand accounts and stories told by the people who were shaped by his wisdom and his compassion. Get a glimpse into the illustrious mentor’s life trough this extract:
“ I must have been ten or twelve years old when I watched Denis Compton and Vinoo Mankad playing at the Cricket Club of India in a Ranji final. By 1947–48, I was training at the New Hind Club nets and became a member of the Dadar Union Sporting Club at Matunga. I was given a two-year playing membership by the P.J. Hindu Gymkhana in Mumbai. I was a left-arm slow-spin bowler, and I used to bowl the chinaman as a regular part of my armoury. It was a big occasion for me when, one day, I saw all the Indian players playing at the adjoining Matunga Gymkhana ground, including the great Vijay Merchant. Watching me bowl, Merchant called me over for a chat. However, I was so awestruck that I couldn’t muster the courage to respond. In retrospect, my love for the game of cricket originated with that encounter!…
I studied at the King George School and was the captain of the junior team there… During this period, I had the advantage of being coached by the great Homi Vajifdar, who was the first Bombay captain. Vajifdar was a big man with powerful wrists…Leading by example, Vajifdar taught us the value of being a good person. He was disciplined, meticulous and had an eye for detail. If you trained with him, your shoes had to be properly polished and your cricket attire had to be perfect. He always said, ‘Whatever you do, you must be the best at it.’
…I joined Dadar Union in 1953, when Madhav Mantri was captain. We never had any meetings but focused on fielding a month before the league. Mantri used to come from work at 6.05 p.m., remove his tie, get into his cricket attire, and we practised like maniacs…‘A family atmosphere. Terrific bowlers, terrific batsmen and even more terrific fielders. We were a great fielding unit. Daya Dudhwadkar, Suresh Tigdi, Avinash Karnik, Ramnath Parkar, with Sunny in the slips and myself…When I saw him for the first time, Sunny was a young boy who would accompany his father to Dadar Union games. Right from that time I could sense how serious he was about batting. He would play on the sidelines, with one of the team members chucking balls at him endlessly. He played with a very straight bat—quite uncommon for a beginner, as your instinct is to put power into the shot with your bottom hand, which then changes the angle of your bat from the vertical to the horizontal…
On all his English tours, though, he invariably excelled. He had an intuitive ability to adjust to the varying conditions of the English atmosphere and pitches. The matchless 221 he scored at the Oval, during the 1979–80 season, in challenging conditions was possibly the pinnacle of his career, though the 101 he made at Old Trafford in typical English conditions probably gave him greater satisfaction. But for all his successes in England, he could never fulfil the ultimate dream that every batsman has—to score a hundred at Lord’s, the Mecca of cricket.”
Cricket Drona is out now! To read more inspired accounts of how Vasoo Paranjape impacted and changed lives of the most famous cricketers, get your copy here.
For over a decade, Mahendra Singh Dhoni has captivated the world of cricket and over a billion Indians with his incredible ingenuity as captain, wicketkeeper and batsman.
Bharat Sundaresan tracks down the cricketer’s closest friends in Ranchi and artfully presents the different shades of Dhoni-the Ranchi boy, the fauji, the diplomat, Chennai’s beloved Thala, the wicket keeping Pythagoras-and lays bare the man underneath. He discovers a certain je ne sais quoi about the man who has a magical ability to transform and elevate everything which comes into his orbit-the Dhoni Touch.
Funny, candid, and peppered with delicious anecdotes, The Dhoni Touch reveals an ordinary man living an extraordinary life.
Here are 5 important people from his life: Seemant Lohani – better known as Chittu, his closest friend
Chittu was perhaps the first-ever witness to the singular traits of Dhoni, whether it was his single-minded seriousness with his task at hand on the badminton court or his immensely practical approach to all facets of life, including exam time. Chittu has also dealt with being a celebrity confidante better than most and while nobody knows Mahi better than Chittu, nobody is more elusive when it comes to talking about Mahi than Chittu. Keshav Banerjee, Dhoni’s school coach
The hard-nosed, no nonsense sports teacher was single-handedly responsible for transforming a goalkeeper into the foremost wicketkeeper of his generation. Dhoni was by far the most unique ward he came across in his multiple-decade long career and the one who understood his tough love approach to coaching innately. He’ll always remain a very revered figure in the Dhoni journey with the man himself making it a point to pay his guru a visit whenever he can. Chottu-bhaiya (Paramjit Singh), who was Dhoni’s former clubmate
Dhoni would go on to become a regular feature in the Forbes’ richest sportstars list for years to come and have the biggest brands in the world at his neck and call. He would also boast of a garage filed with the most opulent two-wheel machines the world has seen. But it was Chottu bhaiya who got him his first sponsor and Chottu bhaiya who indulged his passion for bikes by lending his own RX 100 over two decades ago. Col. Shankar, a good friend of Mahi’s
The Colonel has played a significant role in enabling Dhoni to indulge in his Fauji passions, be it competing with him in shooting ranges around the country or helping him soak in a little of the Fauji lifestyle. Over the years, the two have also developed a friendship that goes beyond army matters, and the Colonel perhaps understands the Dhoni enigma better than most and has come the closest to unraveling the Dhoni code. VB Chandrasekhar: former India opener and national selector
Chandrasekhar had a hand in two of the most significant moments in Dhoni’s cricketing career. He was one of the national selectors who backed him the most while Dhoni was still making his way into the team. It was Chandrasekhar again who first pushed Dhoni’s case with N Srinivasan to get him to Chennai Super Kings at the advent of the IPL, before he played a Dhoni-esque game to win him over during the auction to change the demographics of sporting fandom in the country.
With his phenomenal gumption as wicketkeeper, batsman and captain, Mahi has captivated the hearts of billions of Indians. He dealt with his career, both on and off field, with common sense, a lot of practical ingenuity and some unmatched foresight.
Here are some key milestones in Dhoni’s journey in life, that made him the maestro he is today:
2004: The year of ‘smashing’ new beginnings
India meets the new star of Indian cricket and witnesses his unique repertoire of breathtaking strokes.
“It was late 2004. There had been talk of an exciting twenty-four-year-old from Ranchi who had been making waves in domestic cricket with his big-hitting, but there was little evidence of his prowess, especially when he made a quiet entry in his first few international games.”
There wasn’t much scope left for debate when Dhoni smashed 148 in the next game he played.
‘The India A tour to Kenya in 2004 is correctly identified as the tipping point for Dhoni’s graduation to international cricket. This was one of the first A series to be shown live on TV back home.’
2005:India’s new wicketkeeper
Dhoni makes his international debut and his all-rounder traits come to life through his expert wicketkeeping and explosive batting skills.
‘They’re in the city for the 2004-05 edition of the Challenger Trophy. Dhoni, who made his international debut only two months earlier, is part of the India Seniors team led by Sourav Ganguly.’
‘Dhoni had crossed single figures only once in his first three ODI innings. So, when India met Pakistan in the second ODI in Vizag on 5 April 2005, India’s new wicketkeeper had a lot to prove. Dhoni had batted at No. 7 in all those previous innings.
It’s an area of the ground where he rarely scores. But it was a shot that had both oomph and a bit of arrogance.
‘I saw that boundary and thought, today he’ll score a century. His career hasn’t looked back since that boundary,’ recalls Chhotu about the 123-ball 148 that set the Dhoni career off with a bang.
2006:To chop off or not to chop off?
Dhoni sports his mane with confidence and gets Pakistan’s nod on it.
In other news, he becomes a record holder of the highest ODI score by any wicketkeeper.
The mane was there to stay. Even dictator Pervez Musharraf agreed. He, in fact, ordered Dhoni to not even think about chopping his locks off. By then, Dhoni had also smashed two blitzkrieg centuries, including the highest one day international (ODI) score by any wicketkeeper, established himself among the most destructive batsmen in world cricket and was just a year away from taking over as India’s T20 captain and winning the inaugural World T20, and chopping off his hair.
2007:Shows exemplary captaincy through his unexpected decisions
Thanks to Dhoni’s trailblazing leadership and shrewd judgement, India becomes the first-ever world champions in T-20 cricket.
‘The Joginder Sharma example, of course, stands out, when on that famous night in Johannesburg in 2007, Dhoni handed the inexperienced medium-pacer the final over in the grand finale against Pakistan, a move that shocked the world and also eventually made India the first-ever world champions in T20 cricket.’
2008: Becomes a ‘Super King’
It’s time for IPL players auction and the most popular cricketer in the country is in high demand, so much so that his predictive market rate was going up by USD 100,000 almost every fifteen minutes.
‘The first-ever IPL players’ auction took place on 20 February 2008 at a plush hotel in Mumbai.
Then the CSK management had to take a call on how much they would be willing to pay for Dhoni.
When Mumbai took it up to USD 1.4 million, Chandrasekhar hesitated for so long that he recalls that the Ambani-led auction table almost began to celebrate, and that’s when he pulled the trigger again and took the price up to 1.5 million. That was it. Mumbai backed out.
2014: The legend calls it quits
India is flabbergasted. Conspiracies start floating around, no one understands the reason behind his decision to quit test cricket in the middle of a series.
‘Dhoni quit test cricket in the middle of the series against Australia in 2014-15. I had no inkling – nobody did – that this thought was even churning in his mind. When he announced his retirement, everybody was stupefied.’
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Bharat S Sundaresan’s The Dhoni Touch focuses on breaking into the life of a cricketer extraordinaire, who has remained a mystery wrapped in a million dollar bubble. This is not the story of where M.S. Dhoni has come from or where he’s reached. It’s about how he got there.
