In the words of commentator Harsha Bhogle, the expression ‘end of an era’ is often used “very loosely”. Be that as it may, I wonder what else would suffice as an adequate descriptor of Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s departure from the Chennai Super Kings captaincy.

What better expression does one use to hark the inimitably balmy nights of anticipation, lost fingernails and pure euphoria as Captain Cool pulled off one run chase after another? How do you describe a historic four-trophy heist in words that don’t allude to what can only be called a golden decade of T20 cricket?

That is probably why Bhogle himself admits that Dhoni giving up the captaincy is truly the end of an era, clichés notwithstanding, for the millions of CSK fans who have made Dhoni our own, while we lent him our home.

We use the expression "end of an era" very loosely sometimes. But Dhoni giving up the captaincy of @ChennaiIPL is truly the end of an era for all those loyal fans with whom he forged a relationship of the kind very few have.

— Harsha Bhogle (@bhogleharsha) March 24, 2022

I remember the day Dhoni was made CSK captain, in January 2008. I had turned 18 on the day of the auction and some friends and I were out for coffee at the local ‘Barista’. Back then, our phones were colour-display Nokias with cameras -- if we could afford them -- and GPRS internet meant that we had better things to do than be online all the time. So, the news of Dhoni as captain had to wait until we got back home and tuned into the nightly news bulletin. To this day, the excitement about having India’s hot new T20 star captain your home team rings true.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni plays a shot during an IPL game against Royal Challengers Bangalore in Johannesburg, South Africa, in this May 23, 2009, file photo. .

We lost the IPL that year. Shane Warne, Sohail Tanvir, Graeme Smith and Yusuf Pathan were just too good for CSK. But if I close my eyes, I can recall the expressionless ice-man in Dhoni: unperturbed, unworried and non-hassled. Almost as if he knew that this was merely the start of a legacy that he was going to build.

Barring the 2009 season, the years that followed were nothing short of a fairytale for CSK. The team produced T20 superstars in Michael Hussey, Dwayne Bravo and Albie Morkel, gave re-birth to a talent like Suresh Raina, and successfully acquired and groomed a diamond in the rough called Ravindra Jadeja. Each of these outcomes had the Dhoni stamp of approval. For it was by now well-known that Dhoni was CSK and vice-versa.

The team won back-to-back IPL championships in 2010 and 2011. If Dhoni the two-time World Cup winning captain wasn’t enough to convince the cricketing world about his leadership prowess, Dhoni the IPL champion had arrived.

What many don’t notice -- and you could possibly forgive them for looking past it given the silverware collected and match-winners on demand -- is that Dhoni often sacrificed his own batting for the sake of the team. At a time when he was a quality number 3 batsman, Captain Cool would often demote himself to promote a red-hot batting heavyweight in form. Oftentimes, MSD would end up batting at number 6 or 7, where all he had was a few balls to whack around. And yet, his IPL batting was the stuff of legends.

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