MS Dhoni Rescues Jharkand Team With A Century Last Man Standing

VIDEO : MS Dhoni’s 94 ball Century in Vijay Hazare Trophy

Chhattisgarh thought they had got MS Dhoni out the first ball he faced, caught at the wicket with point, slip, wicket-keeper Manoj Singh and medium-pacer Abhuday Kant Singh going up in unison.

The Jharkhand skipper survived that, a leg-before appeal to a straighter one from leg-spinner Shubham Agarwal that hit him on the backfoot, a catch that Chhattisgarh skipper Mohammad Kaif dropped when on 95 and scored 129 off 107 balls with 10 fours and six sixes in a Vijay Hazare Trophy match at Eden here on Sunday. This was his seventh List A century.

Walking in when Jharkhand were in disarray at 43/4 as opener Anand Singh fell, Dhoni saw Ishank Jaggi go with no addition to the score. On 26, Dhoni, shuffling across, also survived a leg-before shout off SS Kharwar but he hung in there and reached 52 with a six over long-off to Agarwal, his first.

Jharkhand’s innings then was 41.4 overs old. That he added 77 runs before being caught by the ’keeper, off Kharwar, in the innings’ last ball shows the kind of mayhem Dhoni can cause even when this rusty. The blitz included a chipped shot that went one bounce to the wide mid-on fence.

Chhattisgarh skipper Kaif’s decision to introduce off-spinner Sahil Gupta in the 46th over had Dhoni hitting the bowler across the line in the mid-wicket and long-on region for successive sixes. This was followed by two boundaries; a cross-batted heave over the bowlers’ head and another at wide-mid-off. The over yielded 23 runs, including one wide one of the 12 Chhattisgarh, who won the toss, bowled.

Kharwar began the last over and Dhoni tonked him cross-batted beyond the sightscreen for a six. He didn’t run off the next ball and hit the bowler through midwicket for a four. From a sedate start where survival was priority, Dhoni and Shahbaz Nadeem 151 runs for the seventh wicket in 166 balls. It helped Jharkhand reach 243/9, a score that had seemed impossible in the 20th over when they were 6/57. The journey from being patchy to the world’s best finisher is far from over but Dhoni is showing the willingness to grit through it.