The End of Chapter One: Our Formative Generation Calls It A Day

Mahendra Singh Dhoni announced his retirement today. This is not a tribute piece to his career, but rather one to the group of cricketers, and the period of time in Indian cricket, that preoccupied the first chapter of the lives of millions of Indians and inspired them to take just the one extra step toward their ambitions.

For many, the 2002 NatWest Trophy heralded a much-needed reboot of Indian cricket. For my generation, this was where Indian cricket started. Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif – two youngsters with a handful of international matches under their belt – taking India past the finish line against an experienced England team was just the push we needed to go all-in on cricket as our sport of choice.

For some context, this was still a time when TV sets were switched off and Akashvaani bid farewell half its viewership as soon as Tendulkar lost his wicket. The deference accorded to Tendulkar by the Indian public at large is unfathomable for any player in today’s times. Tendulkar was Team India. For any other player to showcase the capability – nay, have the audacity – to carry a match in which Tendulkar failed, was stuff of astonishment.

The months after India’s World Cup Final loss in 2003 saw the emergence of the new Indian team – one with a fair balance of declared legends and prospective legends. But more than that, this team gave my generation unprecedented freedom of choice. The sheer abundance of talent in this team allowed us to trust players apart from Tendulkar, at times even depend on them to win us a match. This was unthinkable just a few short years ago.

Indian cricket rose above its Bombay-Delhi hegemony. We could now admire MS Dhoni from Bihar, Suresh Raina or Mohammad Kaif from Uttar Pradesh and Harbhajan Singh or Yuvraj Singh from Punjab. We could win an away series in England and speculate how it felt to win a World Cup.

And then, we did.

Hardly any senior played the 2007 World T20. Most viewers took it as an experimental tournament with an experimental India captain – Dhoni. We couldn’t beat Australia or England outside India without Tendulkar, Dravid or Ganguly, could we? Why was a third of the Indian squad made up of names we’d never heard before? Wait, did we just win a World Cup?

India paraded its way to victory throughout the world for the next five years. Dhoni didn’t just turn out to be a good captain, but India’s best. Tendulkar found his second prime. Out of a team of eleven, up to nine Indian players were capable of bowling, and a similar number of batting. India won the Commonwealth Bank Series in Australia, drew a Test Series in South Africa and was virtually unassailable at home.

Our sights, though, were set firmly on the 2011 World Cup. We played a veritable league of legends – all the players our generation had looked up to for the past decade were now together, and raring to win. Rightly, win we did.

Eras seldom end in one clean stroke. Soon after the World Cup win, India began a gradual baton hand-over. Dravid retired in 2011 and VVS Laxman in 2012. Tendulkar retired, with the grandest retirement ceremony for any sportsperson in living memory, in 2013. Sehwag and Zaheer followed in 2015. By early 2020, Yuvraj, Irfan Pathan and Gautam Gambhir had all announced their choice to hang up their boots.

The retirement of Dhoni – their longest-serving captain – is also a declaration of the closure of this chapter of Indian cricket. In more ways than one, it is the Thank You slide of the presentation of Indian cricket in the new millennium. It comes at a time when many of our generation are at an inflection point, toying with what to do with the rest of our life. And, it comes with a message – It’s our turn to shine.

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