Former India fast bowler RP Singh, one of MS Dhoni’s closest friends in the cricketing circuit believes the postponement of the T20 World Cup to 2022 has played a role in the former India captain’s decision to retire from international cricket. Having not played any form of cricket in the last one year, Dhoni announced his retirement from international cricket on August 15, meaning India’s semifinal against New Zealand at last year’s World Cup would be his last India appearance.
Dhoni retired having played 350 matches, in the final of which he scored 50 off 72 balls, unable to take India over the line in the knockout game. Singh however, feels another factor that could have led to the retirement call could be the realisation that Dhoni could no longer finish matches for India which he used to at one point in his career.
“Of course, it has. He has been a massive player in T20s so he wanted to wait until the big event. Besides that, age and fitness also contributed to his decision. If you leave aside IPL, he hardly got any opportunity to display his batting for India in ODIs for the last 12-15 months,” Singh told Cricket.com.
“In the 2019 World Cup, he may have wanted to bat at number 4 but that was not done because of team management and in the lower order, he barely got a chance until the semi-final game. Oddly, he also was not able to finish off games the way he used to earlier. Maybe that also gave him the signal that he was reaching his end and he needed to take a call on his future.”
Singh recalled an instance from the first-ever T20 World Cup which convinced him of Dhoni’s strategic acumen. Singh, who picked up 12 wickets in the tournament, including figures of 4/13 against South Africa, revealed an instance from the T20 World Cup where Dhoni was one step ahead of the opposition batsman and almost foresaw what was going to happen.
“This incident was during the T20 World Cup final in 2007, regarding Mohammed Hafeez’s dismissal,” Singh recalled.
He (Dhoni) posted a fielder in between the third and fourth slip. I told him that the slip position is not right but he said it’s a floating position. You either have a 3rd slip or 4th slip because a slip fielder rarely jumps and gets the catch. However, MS told me that Hafeez’s release shot was his tendency to play at balls which go away.
“That was the moment when I thought his knowledge was incredible. He knew how to control the game. He never led Bihar or Jharkhand or India A but that hardly mattered. If you talk about the last over of Joginder Sharma, people say it was a fluke but it was in fact a strategic decision. He knew that he would require Sharma in the last five overs. He had that foresight to see what was going to happen.”
