My love for cricket dates back to 1984. Those were the days I would wake up with an alarm at 4.30 AM sometimes along with my mother. We would sit and watch Benson and Hedges series matches. It was an attraction to see the players in colored jersey and white ball. My fascination for cricket continued with Tendulkar and finally with M.S.Dhoni.
Post our 2011 World cup win I hardly watched cricket. Whenever I did, I liked the way he was heralding the transitions and was doing what he does best which is to treat everything as a game and look at everything else outside the game as it is. What stands out for people is what our PM wrote in his letter, “I remember seeing a picture of you playing with your cute daughter even as everyone around you was celebrating a victory in a particular tournament! That was vintage MS Dhoni“. My wife said he is the best example of “switch on switch off.”
On Oct 24th, 2016 there was a blog post on MSD Untold story review done by Greatbong. It was his 1000th Blog post. On Aug 16th, 2020 he wrote about his retirement titled, ” What Dhoni means to me?” So two things led me to create this blog. One was how much I Iiked the movie MSD and the second was how much Dhoni had influenced me in other walks of life even though I have not been following cricket for the last several years.
“Thanks a lot for ur love and support throughout, from 1929 hrs consider me as Retired (sic),” he wrote in the caption. That was MSD in his unassuming style announcing retirement. I was watching reactions on his sudden Insta post on Independence day. Gavaskar said it best, ” When I die the last thing I want to see is the last six Dhoni hit in the 2011 world cup final“. Dean Jones said, “Dhoni will end as one of the best players India has ever produced.” I liked Harsha Bhogle’s video reaction on Dhoni’s retirement which went viral.
So was the 1929 hrs Insta post-Sui Generis (Latin for “one of a kind”)? When Twitter launched, it was viewed as sui generis because of its unique style of communication. Among history’s greats, Leonardo da Vinci is often considered sui generis—a man of such stupendous genius that the world may never see his like again. My wife told me that I should see the MSD movie as you will get a lot of blog materials. I said, “Let us watch it next week”. That made me observe the movie with rapt attention with a pen and paper. Not once, I saw the movie twice. The learnings from the movie are for another po10shall blog.
I like certain dates like the date 10/10/2020 which was yesterday and I liked 1929 hrs. The 1929 hrs drove twitter mad as the world came up with a version of the 2019 world cup loss at the same time to the great depression of 1929. The number is symbolic of having completed a major event or receiving closure to a particular chapter of life.
Call it divine intervention. In Dhoni’s first match and last match, he had run-outs. That reminded me of Forrest Gump dialogues, “From that day on if I was going somewhere I was always running“.
On our Independence day, he chose 1929 hrs to declare his independence. When some of his IPL team CSK colleagues asked him why did you pick Aug 15th and 1929 Hrs to announce, he reportedly said, “Just felt like it” and that is how he created a RICH impact with his RICH time.
To me, he is the ideal R.I.C.H person, someone who created a tremendous impact and captured many hearts all over the world. A RICH Indian believes in capturing what captures him and that is MSD for me.
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