MS Dhoni helicopters, hits two one-handed sixes and then hugs fan who breached security to touch his feet

There was a huge roar followed by a shush at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad when the umpires asked Shivam Dube to wait to check the height of the full toss.

It was the Gujarat Titans’ home match, but the roar for the wicket was not because of that. It was in anticipation to watch MS Dhoni walk out to bat. The third umpire didn’t take long to give the marching orders to Dube. In walked Dhoni.

Nothing else mattered now. The situation of the game. The race to the playoffs. The game of net run rate… Nothing. It’s just one man and his fans.

IPL has been one big festival for Dhoni for the last two years. It’s routine now. The fans want Dhoni to bat higher up the order but the knee injury doesn’t allow him to bat at full strength for more than 15 balls. Against GT on Friday, he batted 11. Three of them were sixes. And no ordinary sixes.

Dhoni’s first six was a one-handed swat to a Mohit Sharma knuckle ball. You could almost feel the Narendra Modi Stadium vibrate. It was that loud. But Dhoni was just getting started. With 53 to win, even sixes off the remaining eight balls would not have been enough, but who cares? The fans just wanted Dhoni to bat all of them. And he almost did, facing seven of those.

The first two balls of the last over of Rashid Khan were deposited in the stands by Dhoni. The first one was a helicopter shot. He danced down the track to negate whatever turn there was on offer and used those powerful wrists of his to give the ball a mighty twirl.

Rashid dragged the next one down. Dhoni was out of shape, but he has got such good hands that he doesn’t need to be in a good position. Not even two hands on the handle.

The third ball was an anti-climax. For some reason, Dhoni decided to defend it, but it was a googly, and it hit him on the back leg. There was a long, stifled appeal from Rashid but the umpire shook his head. GT stand-in captain Rahul Tewatia sent it upstairs. Replays showed the ball would have bounced over the stumps. Dhoni had three balls to entertain.

Fan breaches security to touch Dhoni’s feet, gets a hug from CSK legend

When the replays were being shown on the screen, a fan breached security and ran onto the field. Dhoni made a fake attempt to run away from the scene before giving in. The fan touched the legendary cricketer’s feet before getting hugged by him.

The next two balls were dots but Dhoni finished it off with a boundary to remain unbeaten on 26 off 11. CSK fell short of GT’s mammoth 232-run target by 40 runs.

Captain Gill, left out of India’s T20 World Cup squad, made 104 off 55 balls and left-hander Sudharsan was equal to the task in raising his maiden IPL hundred with a splendid 103 off 51 balls.

Their total of 231-3 was briefly challenged while Daryl Mitchell (63) and Moeen Ali (56) were batting, but Chennai fell short at 196-8.

Medium-pacer Mohit Sharma dismissed both half-century-makers in his 3-31.

Chennai’s loss tightened up the race to the playoffs. Chennai remained in the fourth and last playoff spot while Gujarat was just outside but needs to win its last two matches by big margins to drastically improve its net run rate.