One from the album: Dhoni watches a cricket match on TV with friend Robin Kumar in their room in a tenement in Kharagpur

Calcutta, Nov. 8: Mahendra Singh Dhoni the leader was born on the Golkhuli ground in Kharagpur.

His team was in trouble on a winter day of 2002. It was the final of a six-over-a-side tennis ball tournament and Durga Sporting had been bowled out for just 30 runs.

The opposition was cruising when an umpiring controversy over a boundary erupted. “With the match all but lost, we decided to walk off in protest,” recounts Durga Sporting skipper S. Srinivas Rao. “At this point Mahi intervened and urged us not to leave the field. Let’s channel all our energies into bowling and fielding and give it all we have, he said.”

Mahi was the team’s fastest bowler and Soma, Rao’s brother, its wicket-keeper. “Mahi bowled his heart out after that and I can still feel his deliveries thudding into my palms behind the wicket. The atmosphere was electric and the batting side panicked,” recalls Soma.

Durga Sporting managed to “tie” the match and then win it through the flip of a coin.

Dhoni had worked his first miracle on the cricket field.

In those days, when Sourav Ganguly was the Indian captain and Yuvraj Singh the great young hope, Dhoni was a ticket collector on the Kharagpur platform.

His claim to cricket fame was playing on the dusty fields of Kharagpur with a tennis ball.

“He always had a cool head on his shoulders and would never give up,” says electrician Rao, under whose captaincy Dhoni played for his para team Durga Sporting.

But even back then, Dhoni didn’t come cheap. He wouldn’t charge a rupee to play for Durga Sporting — he lived close to its home ground of Golkhuli — but when he turned his arm over for other teams, he pocketed Rs 2,000 per match.

That made him the most expensive tennis-ball player in Kharagpur and an inspirational leader on the cricket field.

Today, not much has changed. He just leads Team India in all forms of the game and has added a few zeroes to his match earnings.

Dhoni’s Kharagpur days: Sunday Metro : Mahi of Midnapore