Dhoni the finisher put on ice

It was a chest-high short ball on an off-stumpish line, quick and skiddy. MS Dhoni, shaping to pull, was late on his shot and the ball hit the sticker of his bat and rolled to mid-on.

A few years ago, he might have picked up the length a fraction earlier, and given himself time to swing his entire body through the shot, the vicious force of it lifting both his feet off the ground. The ball might have hit the sweet spot of his bat with a resonant crack and sped away through midwicket.

Four overs earlier, Dhoni had played that trademark pull, but against the gentler pace of Albie Morkel. Now he was facing the genuinely quick Nathan Coulter-Nile.

The next ball was slower, and Dhoni couldn't muscle it past mid-off. Coulter-Nile then speared one very full, almost in the blockhole, and Dhoni clipped it straight to midwicket. This was the 18th over of Chennai Super Kings' innings and Coulter-Nile had sent down three straight dot balls.

Scattered applause rang out in the Upper G stand of the MA Chidambaram Stadium. It is a cliché to call the Chennai crowd 'knowledgeable', but here was evidence that they still appreciated good cricket from an opposition player, even in the hyper-partisan IPL era. This was uncomfortable watching for the mostly yellow-clad spectators, but it was good bowling, and they recognised it.

They may have wondered, though, if a younger Dhoni might not have sent that last ball soaring over wide long-on with that famous whip of his bottom wrist. They may have wondered when they had last seen their hero play the helicopter shot.

Such thoughts had seemed farthest from their minds when the stadium announcer called out the XIs after the toss. They had greeted the other names - notably Suresh Raina's - with raucous cheers, but they didn't even wait for Dhoni's to be called out before they exploded.

And that was nothing compared to the reception they gave him when he stepped over the boundary rope in the 13th over, at the fall of Faf du Plessis' wicket. It was a wraparound wall of noise, broken only by the I, J and K stands that had been left vacant because the Supreme Court had ruled they had violated safety norms. It took until Dhoni had faced a couple of balls and picked up a nurdled single and a late-cut two off Amit Mishra for the whistles and insistent chants of 'Dhoni, Dhoni' to subside.

But now they had gone quiet. Coulter-Nile bent his back and pounded the ball into the middle of the pitch. It leapt over Dhoni's shoulder before he could swivel around fully to hook it. A leg bye the next ball took Dhoni to the non-striker's end. He was batting on 15 off 21 balls, and had faced five balls in the 18th over of a Twenty20 innings without managing a run off the bat.

R Ashwin hit the last ball of the over for four, simply standing tall and caressing it into the gap between point and third man, and picked up three intelligently placed twos in the next over, the 19th of the Super Kings innings. Ordinarily, the Chennai crowd would have grown restless at Dhoni being kept off strike at this stage of the innings, but now they may have almost been thankful for it.

They found their voice again when Dhoni hit Coulter-Nile for two sixes in the final over, but there was a flatness to the noise they made, a recognition that these were fortuitous runs. The first one was an attempted leg-side slog that went off the top edge and carried all the way over the backward point boundary. The second was a slower ball that Dhoni swung too early at, and met much further in front of his body than he intended. Dhoni fell away to the leg side and his bottom hand came off the handle, but he made good enough contact for the ball to sail over the straight boundary.

He skied the next ball into mid-off's hands off the top-edge, late on another pull against another well-directed short ball. He had made 30 off 27. It was an un-Dhoni-like innings, but he's played plenty of them in recent times.

There were two innings at the World Cup that resembled this one against Daredevils. India batted first both times, and their top order had laid the perfect platform for a final flourish.

Against Pakistan, Dhoni walked in to bat in the 46th over, and kept finding the fielders on his way to 18 off 13 balls. Against South Africa, he entered in the 45th and made 18 off 11. He punished the wayward Wayne Parnell for three successive fours but struggled against Morne Morkel's pace and bounce. Both innings - like the one against Daredevils - ended with top-edged pulls.

Dhoni could have been out to a top-edged pull even in the semi-final against Australia. On 42 he was rushed by an accurate short ball from Josh Hazlewood, but Michael Clarke put down the skied chance at midwicket. Dhoni had walked into a desperate situation, and winning seemed out of the question, but the discomfiting thing about his innings was the sense that none of the bowlers seemed particularly scared of bowling to him. That was never the case a couple of years ago, no matter what the situation was.

The feeling of watching a fading Dhoni subsided when Super Kings were on the field. Here were the comfortingly familiar idiosyncrasies of his captaincy. Here were the traffic-policeman-like gestures to his fielders. Here were the weird field placements - leg gully made an appearance; mid-on stood directly in line with long-on when Ashwin bowled to Morkel; two backward points prowled within handshaking distance of each other when Dwayne Bravo bowled to Yuvraj Singh and Morkel. Here was the feeling of certainty that Ravindra Jadeja would not get a bowl as long as any of the left-handed trio of Morkel, Yuvraj and JP Duminy were at the crease. Here was the Dhoni you knew and despaired over and maybe even loved.

Dhoni has retired from Test cricket. He has said he will think about his ODI future after the World T20 next year. Going by that, we might see him play for India for a while yet. "I'm 33," he had said after India's World Cup exit. "I'm still running, I'm still fit."

That he is. But his batting has shown signs of decline. The big hits have grown less frequent, as have the fire-and-ice finishing knocks. He may yet play one or two during this IPL season and dispel thoughts of his cricketing mortality for a while, but there is a definite sense that we are seeing a most singular career winding down. Enjoy him while he's still around.