Mumbai: After being linked with a bevy of Bollywood beauties, Captain Cool chose to settle down with a regular girl. And this seems to be the way our cricketers like it. Unlike sportsmen abroad, our men in blue like to keep it real and regular when it comes to choosing their spouses.
Wives and girlfriends or WAGs of high-profile football players might be a cult community on foreign shores, but the better halves of sport stars in India are far from the glitterati.
Sakshi is the kind of girl any man would like to take home to meet his mother. Five years younger than Dhoni, the hotel management graduate has a similar family background as her husband. The quintessential small-town girl is not fiercely celebrity-oriented and has all the ingredients that make her affable and amiable.
She, like other cricket wives – Anjali Tendulkar, who’s a doctor; Aarti Sehwag, a homemaker; Vijeta Dravid, a doctor; Sailaja VVS Laxman, a software professional – fits the non-glamour, homely variety.
There is a stark contrast between them and WAGs abroad, who move around in their Louboutin heels and Dior dresses. They are usually seen cheering their men while sipping martinis, but wives of Indian cricketers are on the other extreme. Whenever they are spotted, they are seen in Indian clothes and the look is completed by sindoor and mangalsutra. You would hardly ever spot a cricketer’s wife at a match.
These star cricketers have the moolah and fame, or simply put all it takes to attract any pretty young thing they want. So what makes them choose these regular, homely types over and above the celebrity swish set?
Image consultant Dilip Cherian deconstructs the trend. “First, unlike footballers who are aggressive and flamboyant, cricketers like to maintain a gentle and mild image. Hence you won’t see them publicly revel in parties or hang out with girls.
“Second, cricketers in India still mainly belong to the middle class. They carry that sensibility even after being exposed to glamour. No matter who they might get drawn to temporarily, in their hearts they want to bring home a girl of their mother’s choice.”
As far as Dhoni’s Casanova image was concerned (he was linked with several Bollywood hotties such as Deepika Padukone, Asin, Priyanka Chopra and starlet Lakshmi Rai), his non-flashy, hush- hush wedding with a small-town girl is a bit surprising.
But as we now know, all famous cricketers have taken the same route and Dhoni has also followed a predictable pattern. Adman Prahlad Kakkar thinks all the alleged link-ups could most likely be a publicity gimmick planted by actresses and models.
“Stars love publicity and a link-up with a cricketer gives them their press space. Cricketers, like most young men, love chilling out with actresses and models. But it’s only a matter of time when they realise how incompatible their worlds can be in the long run. Any which way, it’s bound to be a short-term thing,” he says.