For CSK, Dhoni is a habit, he will not retire soon
MS Dhoni had misread a Rashid Khan googly and the ball had slipped embarrassingly between the opening in the pad of the bat to hit the stumps. This was in 2018 during the IPL Final Qualifier where … MS Dhoni and CSK's hitting coach Michael Hussey discussed their experiences during the IPL Final Qualifier in 2018, when Dhoni misread a Rashid Khan googly and the ball slipped embarrassingly between the opening in the pad of the bat to hit the stumps. Hussey thought that his first season in the IPC as batting coach would also be his last, and Dhoni discovered that Rashid could also throw a googly with split fingers. Five years later, five years after CSK overcame Rashid’s ‘wrongdo’ and won the Qualifier against SRH and later the final, Hussey is still the batting coach and Dhonia is about to lead the most passionately supported and incredibly consistent team in IPL to his 5th title. Both players have strong relationships with each other, and Hussey shares his story on the Inside Edge podcast.
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MS Dhoni had misread a Rashid Khan googly and the ball had slipped embarrassingly between the opening in the pad of the bat to hit the stumps. This was in 2018 during the IPL Final Qualifier where CSK’s Dad Army, playing SRH, was in the middle of a tricky chase. As Dhoni walked to the dugout, CSK’s hitting coach Michael Hussey had a sinking feeling. He would follow the worst. The captain would walk up to him, look him in the eye, and growl, ‘I’ll make my way, thanks.’ Hussey thought that his first season in the IPL as batting coach would also be his last.
The night before, the former Australian batsman had shared, in the team’s WhatsApp group, the contributions of the CSK analyst to play the Afghan leggie. The message said hitters should focus on Rashid’s grip when he was at the top of his career. In case Rashid’s fingers are split, he expects a leg twist, if together it would be the googly.
On the field, Dhoni, to his horror, discovered that Rashid could also throw a googly with split fingers. Years later, the wily Afghan with a sly grin would peel a thin layer of mysterious art off him and tell the world that sometimes he changes his grip on him halfway through his approach to the crease, just as he passes to the referee. Hussey, Dhoni and CSK had been sold a lemon.
Appearing as a guest on the Inside Edge podcast, Hussey shares Dhoni’s story that doesn’t end with him taking a flight back to Australia. “MS was fantastic after the game. He said the information was great but he needed time to process… I thought I saw him run my fingers (matches) and after that I forgot… I didn’t look at the ball… I need to remember to look at the ball. ”
The bad captains would have gotten Hussey fired, even the good ones would have at least questioned it. Meanwhile, the great captains, like Dhoni, are different. They look within and get the answer.
Five years after CSK overcame Rashid’s ‘wrongdo’ and won the Qualifier against SRH and later the final, Hussey is still the batting coach and Dhoni is about to lead the most passionately supported and incredibly consistent team in IPL to his 5th title. It is a franchise that understands cricket and cricketers, the knowledgeable owners of CSK have patience. It is the reason why they earn more than others.
Hussey needn’t have worried, he’s a member of the CSK Hall of Famer. The plucky batsman is Chennai’s third best runner after Dhoni and Raina as he was part of two IPL winning campaigns. CSK does not forget those who have served the franchise well. They also believe in continuity and core retention, that has been their USP, their formula for success. They say that in the CSK you don’t lose, you win or you learn.
Hussey fits perfectly into the CSK squad, he ticks all the boxes to be a true yellow CSKian. Having played for the great Australian team of the 2000s, he understands the importance of ‘buddy’ and the strong bond between players who have supported each other for a long time. “Chennai have incredible faith and continuity with their team. Like the great Australian team I was lucky enough to play with, they kept their trust and relationship with each other for over a decade. They knew each other inside and out, the same type I feel at CSK,” he says on the podcast.
Temperamentally too, Hussey is more of a Dhoni than a Kohli. He has a reputation as a calm thinking cricketer. Like the Indian superstar, the Australian great also took the difficult road to the national team. Backstories of him say that these were not gifted prodigies, but honest testers who worked hard. They took the stairs but that did not stop them from reaching lofty heights. They are both firm believers in the process and also problem solvers. When Dhoni struggled with his swing in England, he moved up the pitch. Hussey, on the other hand, would ditch the ‘bat-slam’ and keep the bat in the air to deal with the same problem.
This season, Dhoni has played challenging a knee injury, which has severely affected his career between wickets. And there have also been cases where his reflexes behind the stumps have slowed down a bit.
By design or due to CSK’s undying love of strong, solid and quiet cricketers, the third core member of CSK’s think tank is New Zealander Stephen Fleming. Like Hussey, he too joined as a player and later moved to the bench. Fleming has been the head coach since 2008. He and Dhoni share a special bond. Whenever, during an IPL game, the camera zooms into the locker room to capture Dhoni, Fleming isn’t too far away. Hardly seen talking, they resemble a compatible couple in a long-term relationship that reads each other’s minds and doesn’t need words to communicate.
Fleming has a long podcast with another big CSK shane watson. It is here that one discovers that Fleming too, like Hussey in the early 2000s and Dhoni now, learned the first lesson of holding onto the core. Fleming, captain at 23, had Nathan Astle, Chris Cairns, Adam Parore, Simon Doull, all in their 20s, they would be regulars in the team that would repeatedly hit above their weight in international cricket.
Chennai Super Kings captain MS Dhoni before the start of the 2023 IPL cricket match. (Photo by PTI)
Fleming tells Watson about an early influence during his captaincy that gave him a better understanding of cricket as a team sport. In 2003, when the Kiwis were in the midst of a slump during a tour of India, the New Zealand board of directors sent a leading sports psychologist, Gilbert Enoka, to join the team.
Enoka arrived with a formidable reputation, he was the Swiss Army knife of New Zealand sport. After the season with the Black Caps, Enoka was to be a major decision-maker for the most successful sports team in the world – the New Zealand All Blacks. With him at the helm, New Zealand would win two Rugby World Cups: 2011 and 2015.
In sports circles, Enoka is famous as the man who propagated the “no d*&@heads” policy. To the uninitiated, the collective intent of the team is to keep a player, regardless of his talent, off the team if he doesn’t fit into the team’s culture. In 2017, he gave a quote that often finds its place in corporate presentations. It’s the ultimate definition of “d*&@heads”.
“A d*&@head does everything about them. (They are) people who put themselves ahead of the team. Or people who believe they are entitled to things or expect the rules to be different for them. People deceitfully operating in the dark, or alternatively, speaking unnecessarily loud about their work.”
Enoka ingrained in the young Fleming the virtue of gathering like-minded players and sticking with them. Looking back on his days as captain, the Kiwi star tells Watson: “Skill-wise we were below the best team, but we made sure all the other parts worked well, we were a more competent team and a team that I was always looking.” CSK also has overtones of old-time New Zealand. They may not look intimidating on auction day, but on the last day of the IPL they end up taking the silverware.
Fleming brought with him to Chennai the man-management skills he had chosen from mind guru Enoka. By the end of the first meeting as the head coach of CSK, the New Zealander realized the complexity of the task for him. Fleming composed a ‘hot’ speech, which he thought he had brought down the team. Hussey, one of the team’s foreign imports, welcomed the talk. Mathew Hayden also gave the thumbs up to him. However, it was an Indian player who approached him to burst his bubble. “You speak too fast, we didn’t understand anything,” he said. He had dropped the penny, Fleming needed to improve his communication to win over the locker room.
In time it did, but both Fleming and Hussey have not grown as leaders in the overwhelming shadow of the larger-than-life Thala. The Kiwi and Aussie upgrade the skills of the CSK players, preparing them to deliver in critical situations, but the playing field looks beyond their jurisdiction. It is where the maestro instructs the orchestra. Dhoni is the fine mesh through which each instruction or strategy must pass before it becomes team policy. There can’t be a CSK, as everyone knows, without Dhoni.
The Super King will not retire anytime soon, he will guide the team onto the field until such time as he can walk. He cannot be replaced, Hussey and Fleming are neither Mourinho nor Guardiola. Dhoni for CSK is a habit, second nature to him. When a player is yellow with confusion, his eyes don’t look for the coaches on the bench, he looks for his Thala behind the stumps.