The former Indian fielding coach R Sridhar has made a revelation about how the former Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni signaled his retirement after the 2019 ODI World Cup.
Sridhar revealed that Dhoni talked about his retirement in a chat with Rishabh Pant before the reserve day of the India-NewZealand semifinal clash.
Sharing the incident in his book ‘Coaching Beyond- My days with the Indian cricket team’, he wrote:
“I can now reveal that at the time of the interview with 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.”
R Sridhar revealed how one sentence from MS Dhoni made him emotional and surprised at the same time.
He said, “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.’”
“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.
Dhoni is considered to be the greatest captain in Indian cricket history. Under his captaincy, India won the inaugural ICC Men’s T20 World Cup. In 2011, India also lifted the ODI World Cup under Dhoni’s captaincy and when India won its last ICC event, which is ICC Champions Trophy in 2013, it came under the captaincy of MSD only.
