KendoUI Grid alter filter and sort in one refresh-Collection of common programming errors

I am trying to set the filter and sort parameters and update my grid in one go instead of two separate calls such as:

grid.dataSource.filter({
    field: 'branchId',
    operator: 'eq',
    value: selectedBranchId
});
grid.dataSource.sort({
    field: 'id',
    dir: 'desc'
});

I have tried:

grid.dataSource.data({
    filter: {
      field: 'branchId',
      operator: 'eq',
      value: selectedBranchId
    },
    sort: {
      field: 'id',
      dir: 'desc'
    }
})
  grid.dataSource.read(); 
  grid.refresh(); 

Which does not work and gives me the following error in console:

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'slice' of null in kendo.all.min.js:13