By Ashis Ray, IANS
London : “He’s getting up too early,” Farokh Engineer remarked, referring to Mahendra Singh Dhoni rising from his squatting position as a wicketkeeper to collect deliveries from bowlers. During the Indian cricket team’s practice session before the 4th ODI at Manchester, Engineer spent time with Dhoni.
He advised the latter to spring up slowly and always on his toes. “Even to spinners?” Dhoni asked. “More so to spinners,” Engineer replied. He kept wickets to the challenging quartet of Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Erapalli Prasanna, Bishan Bedi and Srinivas Venkatraghavan.
The results were not immediate.
But in the 5th ODI at Leeds, Dhoni stamped his best performance of the summer with the gloves. Standing up to the medium pace of Sourav Ganguly, he brilliantly stumped his opposite number Matt Prior and then accepted a sharp outside edge to remove Ian Bell, who’s been a thorn in India’s flesh in the current series.
Indeed, Dhoni equalled the one-day international (ODI) record for the highest number of dismissals by a wicket-keeper in an innings – six. He joined an elite band of four keepers – Adam Gilchrist, Alec Stewart, Ridley Jacobs and Mark Boucher – who between them held the distinction – Gilchrist having accomplished this four times.
Engineer, who turned out in the 1960s and 1970s for Lancashire, is now settled in Cheshire on the outskirts of Manchester, where he lives with his second wife, Julie and youngest daughter.