MS Dhoni and Cristiano Ronaldo: Why we love seeing our heroes defy Father Time

There’s something special about watching 40-year-old MS Dhoni win a game at the death, particularly when loss seems like a foregone conclusion. Or watching 37-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo shut down naysayers by scoring a hat-trick.

MS Dhoni and Cristiano Ronaldo have a lot in common.

They wear the same numbers on their back and Dhoni is a Man Utd and Ronaldo fan.

The similarities don’t end there. The two are proper outsiders who first made it big and then transcended their sport.

While Dhoni was a kid from the backwaters of Ranchi with no godfather and no strong state board to back him, Ronaldo was a child from Madeira who’d beg the waitresses at McDonald’s for leftover burgers to satiate his hunger after training.

While Ronaldo signed for Manchester United in 2003-04 season, Dhoni made his debut for India in December 2004.

And both are now in the last rungs of their career, the muscle memory beginning to fade, the reflex arc becoming slower, the dazzling athleticism of youth ebbing away. It’s time for the end. Almost.

Don Draper, the fictional adman once explained nostalgia’s lure to wide-eyed executives from Kodak who wanted to sell a projector and call it The Wheel. Disagreeing, Draper explained that there were times when the lure of technology could be superseded by a more emotional touch.

He told a roomful of tie-wearing executives:“Nostalgia - its delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek nostalgia literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel; it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved.”

While speaking Draper proceeds to show videos of his wife and kids in different stages, making the entire room tear up as everyone realises that nothing sells like emotion, not even technology.

Seeing Dhoni or Ronaldo still do it reminds us of a time when we first watched them. The triumph of sport doesn’t lie in a round object crossing a line, it lies in transporting us to another time.

When Dhoni hits a six, or when Ronaldo scores a goal, we are not just celebrating their triumph over Father Time. It takes us (the 90s kids) back to the golden days of our youth when giddy hope and naivety hadn’t been shorn away yet. Where the clear stream of optimism hadn't lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit. When we hadn’t learned about the vagaries of the world or the cruel realities of the rat race.

Of course, as Mad Men fans will remember, nostalgia can only mask reality for so long. After selling a product using his family’s supposedly cherished familial ties, Don goes back to a hauntingly empty house where the only voice within the four walls are Bob Dylan’s.

Which brings us to reality. All the wistfulness in the world can’t hide the fact that Ronaldo’s hat-trick came against a struggling Norwich City who are bottom of the table while Dhoni’s heroics were against a team in similar circumstances albeit of higher pedigree.

Dhoni is no longer the finisher he once was. Ronaldo can barely run past defenders.

In the 2019 World Cup, it was Dhoni who struggled to put the finishing the touches as the Men in Blue crashed out.

A week before his hat-trick Ronaldo was throwing a fan’s phone around, the epitome of graceless petulance.

Bouts of nostalgia act like a memory wipe, in this case making us forget that our heroes are running on fumes, a boxer punching on borrowed time.

Both are now part of franchises where even their individual contributions can’t mask the fact, they are ghosts haunting their teams and their presence prevents their teams from moving on. But moments like yesterday’s are what gives us hope, even if it’s false, defining the human experience beyond any other, the triumph of spirit over adversity.

If seeing our heroes win for the first time gives us joy, then watching them come back from despair makes us believe that we can bottle time. And open it whenever we want and go back to a time when life was simpler.

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