🇮🇳 MS Dhoni

Mahendra Singh Dhoni was born on 7 July 1981 in Ranchi, then in Bihar, now the capital of Jharkhand. His father Pan Singh worked as a pump operator at the local MECON industrial steel township; his mother Devaki was a homemaker. There was no cricketing pedigree, no academy, no money. As a teenager he was, in fact, a goalkeeper for his school football team; his coach, watching him intercept crosses, suggested he try wicket-keeping. Dhoni picked up a pair of gloves and never put them down. He played local-league cricket for the Central Coal Limited and, for three years between 2001 and 2003, supported himself by working as a Travelling Ticket Examiner — a uniformed ticket collector — for Indian Railways at the Kharagpur railway station in West Bengal. He earned around eight thousand rupees a month and used the time on platforms between trains to practice his pull shot against a wall.

His promotion to the India ODI side in 2004 was an unusual story for the time: a long-haired, helicoptered-shot-playing wicketkeeper from a town no one had heard of, picked on the recommendation of a national selector named Prakash Poddar who had watched him hit a 129-ball 153 in a domestic match in Jamshedpur. Dhoni's first three ODIs returned scores of 0, 12 and 7. The press called for him to be dropped. India's then captain Sourav Ganguly disagreed; he sent him in to bat at number three against Pakistan in his fifth match and Dhoni made 148, his first international hundred. India had its wicketkeeper.

In 2007 the senior batsmen of India — Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly — declined to participate in the inaugural T20 World Cup, considering the new format beneath them. India needed a captain. The selectors picked Dhoni, then 26, with three years of experience. He took a team of unknowns to South Africa and won the tournament, including a final against Pakistan that India won by five runs after an audacious final-over decision to bowl Joginder Sharma — a journeyman seamer playing his sixth international — instead of the senior bowlers. India was now T20 champion. The cool captain was made.

Over the next nine years Dhoni assembled the only complete trophy cabinet in cricket history. T20 World Cup 2007. ODI World Cup 2011. Champions Trophy 2013. Asia Cup 2010 and 2016. He took India to the No. 1 Test ranking, where they stayed for 18 months. He captained Chennai Super Kings to five IPL titles. He did all of this while almost never raising his voice. The team called him 'Mahi.' Opposition captains called him a mind-reader. His most famous instinct: in the third ball of the 2011 World Cup final, with the asking rate climbing, he promoted himself in the batting order ahead of an in-form Yuvraj Singh — a decision no analyst had recommended. He then went on to score 91 not out and win the match. Asked afterwards why he had promoted himself, he gave the answer that became his epitaph: 'I had a feeling.'

His wicket-keeping is its own art form. He is the all-time leader in stumpings in international cricket — by a margin so large no current player will overtake him. His average dismissal time from a missed sweep is 0.07 seconds. He runs out batsmen between deliveries by collecting the ball, dragging a glove across the bails, and is back in his crouch before the umpire has signalled. The technique should not be possible. It is on video, in slow motion, hundreds of times.

He retired from international cricket on 15 August 2020 — Indian Independence Day — via an Instagram post, with no farewell match. India was furious for about 48 hours, and then accepted that this was, of course, exactly how he would do it. He continues to captain Chennai Super Kings in the IPL and runs a 40-acre farm in Ranchi where he grows vegetables, races motorcycles, and is, by all accounts, no longer cool because the heat does not matter when there is no one left to win the match for. He is, by every measurable index, the most successful captain in Indian cricket history. By every emotional index, he is the calmest.