Former Indian captain MS Dhoni has opened up on the secret behind his calm demeanour on the cricket field saying he always tries to control his emotions as at the end of the day he too is a human. Dhoni went on to say: “Honestly, when we are on the field, we do not want to make any mistakes whether it’s misfielding, dropped catches or any other mistake.”
“I always try and get into their shoes to figure out why a player dropped a catch or why somebody misfielded. Getting angry does not help matters. There are already 40,000 people watching from the stands and crores of people watching the match (on TV, and streaming platforms). I had to see what the reason was (for fielding lapses),” Dhoni said on Livfast.
“If a player is 100 per cent attentive on the ground and he misses a catch despite that, I don’t have a problem. Of course, I also want to see how many catches he took during practice before that.. if he had a problem somewhere and he is making efforts to get better or not. I used to focus on all these aspects instead of focusing on whether a catch was dropped. Maybe we lost a game because of that but the effort was always to try to step into their shoes,” he further said.
Known for his ice-like cool brain while leading his teams on the cricket pitch, the former Indian captain has also had several heated moments on the field. One of the most famous ones happened during the Indian T20 League 2019 when an umpire’s decision during a crunch moment of the game annoyed Dhoni so much that he walked straight onto the pitch to confront him.
“I am also human. I would feel the same way inside like you all felt. When you go out and play a match among yourselves, you would feel bad. We represent our country, so we would feel worse. But we always try and control our emotions,” he added.
Dhoni also urged people to keep supporting India across sporting events because players work hard for years to get to the top and be counted among elite athletes.
