Ravi Shastri Opens up on Dhoni Retirement Claims

Earlier, rumours began to float around that MS Dhoni could be retiring. As one would expect, social media went into a frenzy. He had taken the match ball from the on-field umpires Bruce Oxenford and Michael Gough as England beat India. The English team won the third and final ODI in Leeds to win the series on Tuesday.

However, Team India head coach Ravi Shastri rubbished all the speculation. He firmly stated that that Mahendra Singh Dhoni is not going anywhere.

“MS wanted to show the ball to Bharat Arun. He wanted to show him the wear and tear the ball had endured, to get a general idea of what the conditions were like,” Shastri said.

“That’s rubbish. MS is not going anywhere,”.

Dhoni had come under under the scanner in the aftermath of his 59-ball 37-run knock in the second ODI at Lord’s. Interestingly, the crowd booed Dhoni when he completed 10,000 ODI runs.

After the game, Kohli came out in Dhoni’s support, saying, “When he does well, people call him the best finisher ever and when they don’t go well, they all pounce on him. We all have bad days in cricket and today was a bad one for everyone, not just him.”

“Also, you want to take the innings deep; you don’t want to just lose by 160-170 runs, and he has the experience, but some days it just doesn’t come off. Other people jump to conclusions, but we don’t — we totally believe in him,”.

MS Dhoni had announced his retirement from Test cricket back in 2014. He is now the 4th Indian and 12th player to reach the 10,000 run milestone. He has joined an elite club consisting of Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid and other players of that ilk. MSD is also the second wicketkeeper after Kumar Sangakkara to reach the 10,000 run club