Joining the Railways Ranji team, he began work as a Traveling Ticket Examiner (TTE) at the Kharagpur Railway Station.

He was upto the task though, slowly but surely.

In his early years, he started making waves in the local cricketing circles – a young frail-looking lad clearing the ropes with ease! Despite his talents, his background meant that the journey for him would be arduous. The acme of it all – the night of 2nd April 2011 – lifting the World Cup after 28 years.īorn in Ranchi, his is a tale of grit, determination, non-conformism and stupefying levels of self-belief. Cool as a cucumber they say and so was he.Īll these qualities kept paying rich dividends for him, the team and the country. He was the same in pleasure and pain, victory or gain, always managing to stay in the present. Things did go wrong at times but that never deterred the man from trusting his instincts. But that was characteristic of MS, always prone to the route not taken and stumping (another characteristic feature) us all on almost every occasion. It was a gamble they said when he promoted himself up the order, ahead of Yuvraj Singh. The most raved of it all has to be the six that won the 2011 World Cup (needless to say Ravi Shastri’s voice served as the most perfect accompaniment one could wish for). The man has offered us so many moments to cherish both on the field and off it. MS, Mahi, MSD, Thala, Captain Cool, Mahendra Singh Dhoni! Footballer in school, later Traveling Ticket Examiner, Cricketer, Army man, Businessman! The more things seem clear about Dhoni, the more enigmatic (even Bharat Sundaresan couldn’t unravel much in his book, as he himself accepted in the closing chapters) he remains.

Six a side cricket score sheet excel