Of Dhoni's genius and Pathirana's impact

The fact that MS Dhoni knew exactly what to do to get rid of Hardik Pandya in the sixth over of their Qualifier 1 was a telling insight of a genius.

The Chennai Super Kings’ skipper brought Ravindra Jadeja over from square leg and stationed him at backward point and told Maheesh Theekshana to stick to what he was doing at that point at the MA Chidambaram stadium on Tuesday night.

Gujarat Titans’ captain Pandya was forced to go over the top, and he reckoned he could. Only, he hit it right into the hands of Jadeja. Pandya knew he had fallen prey to Dhoni playing on his ego, even Ravi Shastri reckoned it so on television.

But Dhoni’s astuteness was more so evident at the start of the 16th over, and it involved a very perplexed Matheesha Pathirana.

Pathirana was stopped in his stride for his second over by the umpires because he hadn’t been on the field for the same amount of time as he had been off it. The bowler was in the pavilion for around nine minutes, and he was on it for less than that.

Had Dhoni played along with the umpires at the time, he would have had to give up on one of Pathirana’s overs at the death. Imprudent as that was, he would have also had a cold bowler come on at a crucial stage of the game.

Dhoni, with his infinite wisdom, chatted with the umpires long enough for the time to expire instead. He was okay with being behind on the over-rate and losing an extra fielder (fifth) in the circle for one over as a result, but he wasn’t willing to lose out Pathirana’s potential impact.

A fair bit of babbling later, Pathirana got on with it, and the rest is history.