MS Dhoni has expressed his happiness at how the test cricket has evolved over the years. He also lauded the bazball approach used by teams in test cricket to force results in their favor, which has helped bring excitement into the format.
Since Brendon McCullum took charge of the England test side in 2022, he employed a positive mindset for the players to score runs. ‘Baz’ is nickname of McCullum and the term was coined to describe the playing style of the England batters, who scored runs at a quick pace in test cricket.
Interestingly, McCullum adopted an aggressive approach during his playing days, while slamming 145 off 79 in his final test against Australia. The England skipper Ben Stokes inculcated the mindset among players and has helped the side dominate the opposition in the last few years.
Recently, India set the world record for fastest 50,100, and 200 in test cricket against Bangladesh in Kanpur. After more than two days of game was washed out due to rain, the Rohit Sharma-led side posted a total of 285 at an astonishing rate of 8.22 runs per over. As a result of this mindset, they secured a victory by seven wickets.
The approach seems to have impressed Dhoni, who feels now weather can’t play a major role in dictating the match results, which has attracted the fans towards test cricket.
MS Dhoni was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo:
“You can give cricket any term that you want to. What we have seen is cricket has evolved. The way people are playing cricket is very different. There was a time when in ODIs something was considered a safe score; now that score is not safe in T20s too.”
“Even if we are playing only four days of cricket and one day gets washed out, still you get a result – that’s the beauty of Test cricket, and that’s how it should stay,” he emphasized.
MS Dhoni shares a hilarious cricket conversation with his wife Sakshi
A video clip of MS Dhoni has been doing the rounds on social media, where the former Indian keeper recalled his light-hearted conversation with his wife, Sakshi.
Dhoni shared that Sakshi once schooled him about the wicketkeeping rules, while the duo were watching an ODI game. After the bowler delivered a wide, the wicket-keeper stumped the batter out, resulting in the umpire taking a review. Sakshi put forth an opinion that the batter can’t be deemed out on a wide and Dhoni responding by telling her that the rule is for the no-ball.
Here’s how the conversation went:
“We were watching a game together at home, I think it was an ODI, Sakshi was there with me. Usually me and Sakshi don’t talk about cricket. So the bowler bowled a wide delivery, the batsman stepped out and was stumped. So these days we see umpires take a review and leave it on the third umpire to decide. My wife started ‘Out nahi hain’. And by the time she said ‘It’s not out’ the batsman had already started walking back to the pavilion,” said Dhoni.
“‘You just see they will call him back, wide ball mein stump ho hi nahi sakta hain (you cannot get stumped on a wide ball),” he added.
MS Dhoni ended his international career with the most stumpings (195) in international cricket across all formats. Former Sri Lankan skipper Kumar Sangakkara is placed second with 139 dismissals.
