Viswanathan K's Thoughts

You’d have to live in a cave to not know that MS Dhoni is popular. But that he was #10 in the most marketable sportspeople worldwide ? That’s beyond imagination. Think about it: the guy plays cricket, a game followed only in a handful of countries (IPL notwithstanding). The others on the list are from football, athletics, F1, tennis…the usual suspects. Coming from games with huge followings. Playing sports that are popular worldwide. And yet, a guy earning in rupees beat the Euro and dollar guys. Wow! Maybe India is shining. But if you think that it must be because of IPL or India winning the World Cup, then how come the cricketer so many Indians idolize, Sachin Tendulkar, is nowhere to be seen on this list? Even Yuvraj is ahead of Tendulkar! Just goes to show that being good isn’t the same as being marketable. Tendulkar’s like Facebook: popular but with no clear idea on how to translate that into money. And Dhoni’s like Apple: the brand everyone wants to have a piece of.

What a way to win a final! With a massive six, at the end of a superb innings under extreme pressure. By the end, Dhoni had a swagger. Like when he hit the first 6. And he even did a twirl of the bat after winning. Beat that, Australia. Bring on the pressure: that’s so not Tendulkar’s motto (at least not since Sharjah more than a decade back). MSD, on the other hand, seems to revel under pressure. As he said at the end, he took several decisions in the final that would have been criticized for all eternity had we lost…but we won. More importantly, MSD won it along with Gambhir. The guy can seem do no wrong when it matters the most. After a bunch of (mostly) boring group matches, the knockout stage was great. The Australia match was tense for the most part and we pulled through. The Pakistan match wasn’t anywhere near in terms of how close it was, but it more than compensated in terms of the emotion it evoked. And the final was way better than the other two matches: big total to chase ...