MS Dhoni celebrates his 38th birthday on Sunday with his wife Sakshi, daughter Ziva and friends at Leeds, England.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the captain of Indian cricket team has left his footprints on the hearts of every member of his team, old and young. Born to Pan Singh and Devki Devi in 1981, Mahi, as he’s fondly known, was the youngest of 3 children. His father, a MECON employee, moved to Ranchi from Almora in Uttarakhand. During his school days, young Mahi was the goalkeeper of the football team of DAV School, Ranchi. Similarly, he was excellent at badminton. But all of that changed when his football instructor Mr K.R. Banerjee sent him to play cricket for a local club.
Though Mahi hadn’t really played cricket until that time, he provided immediate evidence of his wicket keeping skills and became the regular keeper for the Commando Cricket Club. Based on his club cricket performances, he was selected for the 1997-98 Vinoo Mankad Trophy U-16 Championship. Footballs loss thus became crickets gain. Today, Mahendra Singh Dhoni characterizes wild battles and athletic wicket keeping on the cricket field. His dictum: Mind, strategy, and attitude are important. You cannot let anything affect you during a match. You’ve to improve your very own game to stay ahead in this world. It appears, there’s fire in his belly, and the world can’t get enough of it! Like his role models Adam Gilchrist and Sachin Tendulkar, Mahi himself became an inspiration for millions of young Indians.
The same year he made his Ranji Trophy debut for Bihar and ended the season with 283 runs in five matches. His maiden first- class century came against Bengal in the 2000-01 season, however it was in 2002-03 that he really came into his own, with 3 Ranji Trophy half- hundreds of years and two in the Deodhar Trophy. In 2003-04 Mahi was chosen in the India A squad for a tour of Zimbabwe and Kenya. Playing the tri nation series involving Kenya, India A and Pakistan A, Mahi scored 362 runs in six innings at an average of 72.40.
This drew attention of then captain Sourav Ganguly and he was picked in the ODI squad for the Bangladesh tour in 2004- 05. For Mahi, as for numerous other cricket legends, the beginning of his ODI career was slightly shaky, as he was run out for a duck on debut. But excellence was soon to follow, as Mahi was picked for the Pakistan ODI series. He did justice to his promotion in incredible way by ending the game with 183 balls out 145, playing as a mail possessed according to Cricinfo, and ended the series with the highest run aggregate to be declared Player of the Series. After ODI series with Pakistan, Mahi overtook the skipper Ricky Ponting as number one in the ICC ODI rankings for batsmen on Apr 20, 2006. In the year 2007, Mahi was nominated as vice captain of the ODI team for the series against South Africa in Ireland and the subsequent India- England seven match ODI series in Aug Sep 2007.