The inevitability of MS Dhoni: the Sri Lankan view

Here's a fun fact. On the night of MS Dhoni's best known innings, that night at the Wankhede, halfway across the world Manchester United were securing yet another comeback victory, rising from two goals down at half-time to beat West Ham, on the way to yet another Premier League title.

While the two events at first glance have almost no connection to one another, there is an underlying inevitability attached to both outcomes that bears mentioning: United going a goal behind, Dhoni coming in to take control of a chase - you already knew what was going to happen next.

So as a Sri Lankan cricket fan with a love of Manchester United, the night of April 2, 2011, was particularly bittersweet. Prayers were whispered - some were answered, others not - as both sides of the inevitability divide were toed.

A Wayne Rooney hat-trick to secure the comeback? Thank you, my Lord and saviour. Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar back in the pavilion early? Yes please. Now just one more: get Dhoni out, maybe? *crickets*

Some things are beyond even the divine.

When Sehwag and then, almost unfathomably, Tendulkar - the pair that had laid waste to bowling attacks through the course of the tournament - were dismissed with just six overs gone in the chase, many of us briefly began to dream.

When Tillakaratne Dilshan leapt across the pitch to dismiss Virat Kohli, who seemed like he was preparing to go on a tear, the dream grew a little more.

And while Gautam Gambhir's 122-ball 97 - compiled through the course of two successive partnerships of 83 and 109 with Kohli and Dhoni - was crucial to India's success, had Nuwan Kulasekara held on to a chance at long-off with Gambhir still on 30, we might have dared to even believe.

But even then, through it all, there was one wicket that everyone watching knew would make those dreams a reality, one wicket that for years had haunted Sri Lankan bowlers, one wicket that on Indian soil would inevitably not be got.

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There is an oft-used but highly effective narrative device employed by screenwriters to either verbally or visually portray the antagonist in a narrative as near invincible, as someone the audience fears as much as the protagonist does. The idea is to make the payoff even greater when the protagonist eventually does come out victorious.

Dhoni's 183 not out against Sri Lanka in 2005, in just his fifth ODI against them, provides just such a portrayal of one of the island nation's greatest ever antagonists.

It was a sluggish surface on which Kumar Sangakkara ground out an excellent - and at any other time match-winning - century. Dhoni produced an innings of such raw devastation, that in a world where Rohit Sharma has three double-centuries, including a 264 against Sri Lanka, it is arguably, taking into account conditions, calibre of opponent, and performance relative to others in the same game, still the single most dominant performance by an Indian batsman in limited-overs cricket.

That knock was the second in a string of home matches against Sri Lanka that year. By the end of his career, his record against them would read as follows: 38, 183 not out, 45 not out, 0, 80, 48, 67 not out, 72, 107, 91 not out, 65, 7; 12 innings, five fifties, two hundreds, and an average of 100.37.

Is it any surprise, then, that the outcome of the 2011 final - one so painful that many have not rewatched it to this day, while convoluted theories of match-fixing somehow still surround it - seemed almost a foregone conclusion for Sri Lankans?

It wasn't simply Dhoni's home record against Sri Lanka that was impressive. While ESPNcricinfo's list of the seven defining MS Dhoni innings includes three against Sri Lanka, that doesn't adequately relay how dominant Dhoni actually was against his southern neighbours.

In his 90 matches across all formats against Sri Lanka, second in number only to his bouts with Australia (91), he averaged 59.36 - significantly higher than his overall career average of 44.96.

These numbers only get more impressive when you take away Tests and T20Is. Of Dhoni's 350 ODIs, 67 were against Sri Lanka - the most against any single team. In those he averages 64.40, far above his overall ODI average of 50.57, and easily the highest against teams he has played at least ten matches against.

Break these numbers down a little further and a picture begins to form as to why exactly peak Dhoni came to resemble the Big Bad of sorts for many Sri Lankan cricket followers.

Of those 67 games, he batted in 53 innings - again, the most against any one team in ODIs - scoring 30 or more in 37 of them - effectively 70% of the time. Incidentally, against West Indies, his next most favoured opponent in terms of average, that figure stands at 40%.

Over half of those 30-plus innings, 19 to be exact, were 50-plus totals, and a further two were centuries. This means that in nearly 40% of his ODI innings against Sri Lanka, Dhoni would score a half-century minimum. The next closest he comes to this level of dominance with against any other opposition is Australia, against whom he scored at least a half-century 28% of the time.

And then there's his aforementioned home record, which, leading up to the 2011 World Cup final, saw him batting at a preposterous 106.66 from 14 matches against Sri Lanka at home. To put that into context, in that same period his overall home average stood at 50.97.

Forget Big Bad, he was the Bogeyman.

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For the Sri Lankans in the ground, on the field and watching at home that day in April 2011, the dream was now a nightmare. Dhoni had walked in with the game finely poised, and now the job was almost done.

To most, that final swing down the ground stands tall as an iconic moment in cricket history, though many Sri Lankans probably haven't even seen it - and the ones that have, have likely expunged it from their collective memory.

Like with all great setbacks, hindsight offers clarity. For Sri Lanka and their fans, the 2011 final was a necessary part of the narrative arc that would bring their budding band of protagonists much needed closure, albeit three years later.

In 2014, the two sides would square off again, this time in the World T20 final, and for once, Dhoni would not be able to perform his customary heroics; limited to just the seven deliveries, he managed a measly four runs, unable to offer the death-overs flourish that Sri Lanka had been at the receiving end of more often than most.

An almighty payoff for the helplessness of 2011, and one that for many members of that victorious 2014 squad would have gone a long way towards vanquishing the demons of three years prior.

But nights such as those, while staying long in the memory, were rare. Indeed, for the most part, for a Sri Lankan to remember Dhoni is to remember pain - or more specifically, the pain of the inevitable - though it did make the odd triumph all the more sweet.