MS Dhoni and the useless one shots I like to come up with

He Is Something Alright

Stephen walked to the very back of the bus, trying to ignore the awkward atmosphere around him. It was like the first day of school all over again, except that these were all grown men and half of them could not understand the language of the others. They were on their way to the second day of practice for the preparation for the Indian Premier League, and already he was wondering when this would all be over.

He did not know what the organizers were thinking. Actually, scratch that he did know what the organizers were thinking. It was mostly about the damn green bills. But he did not know how they thought this was going to work, put famous international rivals in the same teams and then pit them against each other. He had been captaining New Zealand for nearly a dozen years now so he had every right to claim that he knew a little something about cricket. It wasn't a sport just about the best athletes, but a sport that depended very much on those athletes gelling together. Communication was the most important key to a team, it could make or break the team.

So how they expected people of different sensibilities and even grudges against each other in some cases to get along and come together for a successful campaign was completely lost to him at the moment. There were a couple of Aussies, a couple of South Africans, a couple of Sri Lankans and another Kiwi. The rest of the squad was all young Indian boys, most of them internationallly uncapped, and most who didn't speak a word of English. Even if they did, only a couple of them were jolly enough to exchange a word or two with them. They were quite simply over awed by what surrounded them.

Not to say there weren't other problems as well. Parthiv Patel and Hayden had been awkwardly side-eyeing each other the entire day. Murli was as stubborn a player as he had heard of. He spoke only a few words where he made it clear that he wasn't going to change his practice approach for anything. Their coach, Wessels had a strong accent and he could see the non-English speakers struggling to try and figure out what he was saying. Heck sometimes he struggled and he had an accent of his own. Now, it had only been a day but he wasn't sure how anything was supposed to work out over here.

And to top all of it off, the very interesting new captain of India, and well their captain too; was absent the first day, delayed apparently by some business. If there was any highlight to the idea of franchise cricket, it was probably getting to know the Indians in their own land. Because he had captained against them both before and after 2000, and he had to say since Sourav Ganguly; the Indian team had interesting characters to say the least.

The young MS Dhoni had turned quite a few heads in international cricket, including his own. There were stories about the man to say the least; some about his well documented love for bikes, others about his straight face, and yet more about the metaphorical middle finger he had given the Aussies by winning a trophy on their homeground and not celebrating. He had recently captained a Test match victory over the South Africans too; yes Stephen had been keeping up with that series, he was a cricket nerd so sue him. So it was a bit of a bummer that the man wasn't present on the first day and neither was he in the hotel on the second day; supposedly arriving directly at the practice.

Stephen hoped as he took a seat in the corner, his New Zealand teammate right beside him, that they would be able to work out some sort of a solution to the current situation. Otherwise this was just about to be a shitshow with fireworks.

Well atleast he could claim that he had seen the Matthew Hayden shift around awkwardly like an embarrassed school boy.

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It was an hour into practice when he finally got to meet the Indian captain in person. He had gone back to the dressing room to fetch some finger tape for himself when he caught sight of the man. Dhoni was in the corner of the dressing room, kneeling on the ground, facing away from him, struggling earnestly with his shoe.