The cricket fans across the country were taken aback on the evening of August 15, 2020, when legendary MS Dhoni announced his retirement from international cricket. He posted a video montage on his official Instagram account, asking his followers to consider him retired. The former captain last represented India in the 2019 World Cup semi-final clash against New Zealand which the Men in Blue lost by 18 runs.
Dhoni is known for making such surprising decisions. Similar was his approach when he quit the Test format in 2014, handing the leadership to Virat Kohli during the Australia tour. His retirement from the other formats came in the same fashion. However, former fielding coach R Sridhar has recently made a massive revelation about the 2011 World Cup-winning captain.
In his book, ‘Coaching Beyond- My days with the Indian cricket team,’ Sridhar talked about a conversation between Rishabh Pant and Dhoni prior to the semi-final clash against New Zealand in Manchester where the latter gave a hint about calling it quits.
“I can now reveal that at the time of the interview to the BCCI, which I attended from Antigua, I was reasonably certain that for all practical purposes, MS had played his last match for the country. He hadn’t announced it, of course, but I will tell you why I knew. On the morning of the reserve day in our World Cup semifinal against New Zealand in Manchester, I was the first person at the breakfast hall. I was nursing my coffee when MS and Rishabh walked in, picked up their stuff and joined me at my table,” Sridhar wrote.
“New Zealand had only a couple of overs to bat out and we’d start our innings thereafter, so the match would end reasonably early. Rishabh told MS in Hindi, ‘Bhaiyya, some of the guys are planning to leave for London today itself privately. Would you be interested?’ MS replied, ‘No, Rishabh, I don’t want to miss my last bus drive with the team’,” he added.
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Sridhar further stated that he never revealed it to anybody out of ‘sheer respect’; be it head coach Ravi Shastri or his wife.
“I didn’t say a word to anyone about this conversation out of sheer respect for the man. He had taken me into confidence. I couldn’t shoot my mouth off. So, I didn’t utter a word not to Ravi, not to Arun, not even to my wife,” said Sridhar.
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