First England, now the West Indies — the flick-drive has stunned them all. It’s the latest addition to the one-day dictionary, and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who calls it his “patent shot”, says it all began with a tennis ball.“It’s a shot that I picked up while playing tennis ball cricket at Ranchi,” he told The Indian Express. “There’s nothing much to it really, I just go for it.”At the Antigua Recreation Ground, as Dhoni set the the fourth evening ablaze with six sixes in his 52-ball 69, giving captain Rahul Dravid that vital, last push towards the declaration, this was one moment that had even the great Colin Croft squealing like a child at the circus. “Wow,” said Croft, “that was something.”It’s a shot that had the original sixer man Ian Botham stunned — and lost for words inside the commentary box — when England came visiting early this year. After a pause, Botham had this to offer: “Well.”“I have played that for quite some time,” Dhoni told reporters. So what is this scoop drive? Don’t ask the left-arm wrist spinner Dave Mohammed, who watched it from the wrong end. Dhoni had already stunned him with three sixes before this, giving Mohammed the hint that there were more on the way — two more actually.To begin with, he brings the bat down in an arc, quite like any batsman would do for a normal loft over long-on. But in this case, the trajectory changes at the last second, the powerful wrists take over. Dhoni’s right leg begins to move across, he’s now virtually facing the bowler, and believe it or not, the drive turns into a last-minute flick-cum-scoop. Whack. The result? You can guess that.“I was just collecting my runs,” said Dhoni.
