Mahendra Singh Dhoni: as told by coach K.R. Banerjee, Jawahar Vidya Mandir, Ranchi
We were conducting a football coaching camp and Mahendra, who was in class VI at the time, was one of the participants. I noticed that he was a good goalkeeper, adept at making dives to save goals. As it happened, he was a student at the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic School and I was a sports teacher there, in charge of the school cricket team. I told him that since he was a good diver, he should try wicketkeeping in school.
Listen to the school teachers of Sourav Ganguly and Pankaj Advani talk about their early days.
Download here...
Some months later, after the monsoons, the cricket season began and he came and asked me if I would take him in the school team. Now, we already had a wicketkeeper, so I told him to practise with the team for a year and we would take a call after that. He agreed, and this is how he began playing cricket.
Mahendra never spoke much; if you asked him to do something, he would say “Yes, sir” and proceed to do it. He was quiet, like his father and mother. People from Uttarakhand (where his family originally hails from) tend to be aggressive, but not him; he channelled that trait into the game. When faced with a situation or a task, he was never beset by anxieties such as “What will happen?” or “How will it happen?”
Initiator: Banerjee (right) first suggested to Dhoni that he try wicketkeeping. Rajesh Kumar Sen. (Left) Dhoni. Aijaz Rahi/AP
Basically, he was mad about sports. Few know that he is a very good badminton player and has represented Ranchi district at the state level in the game.
Ours is a co-ed school, but he never showed much interest in girls. By the time he was in class IX or X, he knew his future lay in sports. I assured him that if nothing else, he could always get a job as a sports teacher at the government sports college.
In 1999, an out-of-town cricket tournament (he played for the Central Coalfields Ltd, CCL, team) fell smack in the middle of his class XII exams. Board exams are not to be taken lightly, yet he had a commitment with CCL. Mahendra remained cool—he appeared for a paper and after that headed directly to the railway station from the exam hall to catch the train. He returned four days later, in time to sit for the next paper the following day.
He became the school team captain but was never the opening batsman. Once, in an inter-school match, he told me he wanted to open. I didn’t think that was such a good idea but when he insisted, I agreed on one condition—there would be no batsman padded up to replace him or his fellow batsman. He agreed to this unusual condition and sure enough, Mahendra and Shabbir Husain remained not out for the entire 40-over innings. After seeing him play that day, I told him that he was four or five years away from making it to the Indian cricket.
*********
Nandan Nilekani: as told by Deepak Phatak, Subrao M. Nilekani chair professor, IIT Bombay