What makes MS Dhoni a true original with the gloves, as he showed with the Suryakumar Yadav stumping

There are two true originals in the game of cricket these days: Steve Smith and MS Dhoni. No one else can bat like Smith, no one else can bat and keep wickets like Dhoni.Dhoni doesn’t flick; he drags. He doesn’t drive; he shoves. He doesn’t cut; he chops. He doesn’t lean forward; he lunges. He doesn’t defend; he stabs. He doesn’t uppercut; he carves.
But all that to an extent is still apeable, but no one has come close to copying his wicketkeeping skill, in particular his way to stump batsmen. He doesn’t collect the ball; he snatches it. He doesn’t ‘give’, that cushioning that wicketkeepers tend to deploy; he pounces on the ball even as he moves his hands forward towards the stumps. It’s a remarkable visual. So much so that in real-time view, it’s a magnificent blur. It used to be said of Gary Sobers’s reflexes in close-in positions that he used to catch blurs; Dhoni’s gathering of the ball itself a blur. In the words of former fielding coach of India R Sridhar: “It often looks like Dhoni can stop time while executing a stumping”.
Story continues below this ad

The other night Suryakumar Yadav caught that blur. Once he missed the ball, he had heard the death rattle almost immediately; so quick was Dhoni that it almost seems that the batsman is out bowled and not stumped. In real-time, it seems as if Suryakumar had tried to press his back foot back inside the crease and turn back his head also – but replays reveal all that is a posthumous event. The bat hasn’t even finished its full arc in follow-through in that attempted inside-out cover drive, the foot is still outside the crease, when the bails have come off.
Dhoni’s art can be traced back to him being original. A few years ago, on a stage show, he had opened up on his wicketkeeping method. “My technique is different. I am not copybook. Pachas-on saal sey wahi karte aa rahe hai (They have been doing the same thing for decades). They say an, ‘give’ you are supposed to receive the ball. I thought why should you receive the ball? ” These days our wicket keeping gloves have rubber and it has cotton –  it’s already very soft,” before he finished off with this clincher: “you can actually snatch the ball”.
His own style
It’s not a copybook but there is a definite method that’s worth watching in slow-motion. Take the Suryakumar dismissal.
For starters, Dhoni’ gloved hands are very close to the stumps, further than many other wicketkeepers. Time saved already.Story continues below this ad
Secondly, and this is quite difficult even to do with an imaginary ball, Dhoni was actually moving towards his left side but his cupped hands remain almost absolutely still. The body is moving, and the natural reaction is to jerk the hands up a touch. Not him, though. The hands stay almost relaxed in that position in front of him. The left leg finishes dangling outside the leg stump in fact but the hands stay just outside off. Needless to state, the head too is in great position of balance.
Remrkably, he has begun to move his hands towards the ball even before it has crossed the stumps. The side-on view is quite telling. As soon as Suryakumar fails to connect and the ball slides past the bat, Dhoni has begun moving his hands ahead. There is a jerky movement as the ball goes into the gloves.
Here is where his tearing-the-copybook way gets more interesting. Sridhar had once told this newspaper about that exact moment. “While others use their hands to produce that give, he uses his wrs. While his hands are going towards the stumps, there’s a slight flick of the wrs in the backward direction. In my opinion, it’s not safe hands but strong hands that allow him to do that. That’s also the reason you will rarely see him collecting the ball to his side like other keepers. He doesn’t need to,” Sridhar had said. “He uses his peripheral vision more than anybody else. While he’s looking at the ball, his corner of the eye has already gauged where the stumps are and where the batsman’s foot is.”
Somehow, even as the peripheral vision is working and he is moving his hands rapidly towards the ball, he keeps them soft and pliable – even if he is technically ‘snatching’ in his own words, to gather the ball. The whole need for cushioning, the ‘give’ is for that softness, so that you don’t snatch at the ball and the ball doesn’t pop out. Dhoni shreds all that wisdom as piffle, trusts his gloves, his hands, and his instincts to become the fastest hands in the East or West. He doesn’t ‘give’; he just takes them down. A true original.