The moment of the Chennai Super Kings-Mumbai Indians match lasted less than half a second. It was the 11th over of the MI innings. Suryakumar Yadav was bringing the batting side back in the game. Noor Ahmad beat him on a forward charge, the ball spun away, and the right-hander’s hind leg got off the ground before he planted it back. That was all MS Dhoni needed to brush the bails off.
At a packed MA Chidambaram Stadium decked in yellow and chanting his name, that was the only occasion when Dhoni was in ‘action’. It showed that at 43, his reflexes have not slackened and he has got sharper in plotting dismissals. This one was replayed on TV again and again during the match and commentators couldn’t help but keep talking about it.
He had conceded four byes on the leg side in the same over. But this was the Dhoni who elevated stumping to another level. When it comes to waiting for batters to err with footwork and knocking the bails down — the ironman has few parallels. He holds the record for most stumpings in ODIs (123 in 350 matches) and Tests+ODIs+T20Is (195 in 538).
It appeared as if Dhoni was waiting for this one also. The chinaman bowler from Afghanistan was turning the ball both ways and there was a chance that one of those would be outside off and going away. Dhoni anticipated this and positioned himself a fraction of a second earlier, so that no time was wasted. SKY was quick in regaining ground, but he had heard the woodwork rattle before that.
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Everything was happening in nano-seconds, but you could feel the gaps in them. Because he had already anticipated this, Dhoni didn’t have to react mentally. The hand movement was so quick that it made one believe that he knew the height and pace of the ball and how much it would turn. All done, the rest was a simple matter of dislodging the bails. According to reports, it took 0.12 seconds.
It was a turning point of the match featuring teams with 10 IPL titles between them. No captain has handled spinners in white-ball cricket better than the winner of three ICC events and five IPL championships. Noor grew in confidence and went on to claim three more to break MI’s back. Playing with Dhoni is certain to make this youngster a better bowler.
Not often does a wicketkeeping exploit become a talking point in a T20 competition. Ruturaj Gaikwad, Rachin Ravindra, MI’s debut sensation Vignesh Puthur and Noor, the Player of the Match, were the stars with bat and ball. That people still couldn’t stop talking about a stumping speaks volumes of the effort.
Also Read: From prose and poetry to Chepauk googlies – the Vignesh Puthur story