Uncertainty on both sides of T20
● “Welcome,” Faf du Plessis might say when he shakes hands with Virat Kohli in India in a few weeks’ time, “to my world.”
Unsettled has become SA’s default setting, what with player retirements and coach changes galore, and administrators assuming ever bigger chunks of power.
The players’ only certainty is that they can’t be sure what will happen next.
It’s not the best scenario going into a tour of three T20s, the first of them on September 15, and as many Tests, starting on October 2.
That said, the Indians are also walking in the valley of the shadow of uncertainty. It clouds the future of only one player, but he is no ordinary cricketer.
MS Dhoni hasn’t picked up a bat in anger since July 10, when he made 50 on the second day of India’s elongated men’s World Cup semifinal against New Zealand in Manchester.
Every close sighting the thoroughly Indocentric crowd had of Dhoni going on and off the field was scoured for signs that he was considering quitting.
It seems he was indeed pondering important issues. The India team’s bus driver, an unvarnished bloke from England’s north, confided gloomily that day at Old Trafford that, “I’ve been ferrying them around the country for six weeks, and he’s the only one who’s never said a word to me. Or anyone else. Keeps himself to himself, like.”
On Monday, Sourav Ganguly — the captain when Dhoni first pulled an India shirt over his head, in December 2004 — offered perspective: “MS is at a stage in his career where he has to take a decision. ‘What can I do ahead? Can I contribute in the future? Can I take India to victory like MS Dhoni, not someone else?’.”
On Thursday, Dhoni wasn’t included in the T20 squad. On Friday the Times of India quoted an unnamed national selector as saying he had made himself unavailable — adding he had “agreed to hold on” until a replacement was confirmed.
That half-century Dhoni made at Old Trafford was only his sixth in the 21 whiteball innings he has had for India this year, and Kohli earned his 27th Test victory at the helm — equalling Dhoni’s India record — in Antigua last Sunday.
Dhoni played his last Test in December 2014, and for many Rishabh Pant has done more than enough to also inherit the gloves in the white-ball formats.
All that’s left for the man who won the 2011 World Cup to do, it seems, is retire and allow Indian cricket to move on from his greatness. He won’t be in action next month but thoughts of him will be everywhere. And that could help a SA team who will know exactly how India feel.