MS Dhoni told me in advance that Kamran Akmal will be bowled: RP Singh

MS Dhoni is an enigma till date, his batting, wicketkeeping, decision-making style, all are unconventional and that has made him the special cricketer he is today. He had taken the world by surprise after asking an inexperienced Joginder Sharma to bowl the decisive over of the 2007 T20 World Cup final match against Pakistan.

That had turned out to be a masterstroke by MS Dhoni as Misbah-ul-Haq fell into the trap and India won the inaugural edition of the T20 World Cup. The former India captain, who recently announced his retirement from international cricket, had predicted one more instance in the same match and it has came to the forefront after a recent revelation by ex-pacer RP Singh.

In the match played on September 24, 2007, MS Dhoni had told RP Singh to just concentrate on his line and length as Kamran Akmal was set to get out bowled. RP Singh was asking for a different field set-up but the Ranchi-born convinced him to his idea by saying that Akmal’s feet were not moving.

RP Singh followed the instructions of his then-captain and the magic of MS Dhoni prevailed, Kamran Akmal was bowled by the pacer. RP Singh had then realised that Dhoni was not just an ordinary player and had the tremendous ability of reading a batsman.

“For me, it was during the T20 World Cup final in 2007 that I got the sense he is a very special kind of a player. He was not the same Dhoni I had been interacting with. If you look closely, MS didn’t have any defining batting performance in that tournament but he was always there, almost in every match.

“In the final of the T20 World Cup, MS told me in advance that Kamran Akmal would be bowled as his feet were not moving. He asked me to forget about other things and just concentrate on bowling line and length,” Singh added. “I realized that he had got a tremendous reading of batsmen because I would have bowled differently to Akmal. I had asked for a different fielding set-up. But he convinced me in a way it was easier to follow,” RP Singh told Cricket.com.

In the nail-biting final at Johannesburg, India had defended a 158-run target to beat Pakistan by 5 runs in the final over.