Today Mahendra Singh Dhoni Former Indian skipper and two-time World Cup winner, announced his retirement from international cricket via an Instagram post.
“Thanks a lot for ur love and support throughout.from 1929 hrs consider me as Retired (sic)”, read his post of the formal announcement.
He is likely to lead Chennai Super Kings in the upcoming IPL 2020 at UAE and was spotted earlier today arriving in Chennai for the team’s brief training camp before they fly out to the middle-east.
Dhoni retired from Test cricket during 2014 after Melbourne Test on the tour of Australia. Subsequently ODI and T20I captaincy to goven to Virat Kohli in January 2017.
In a span of 16 years at the highest level, Dhoni remained most successful and won 2007 T20 World Cup, 2011 ODI World Cup, and the 2013 Champions Trophy in his kitty.
Dhoni’s last ODI was his 350th for India, wherein he finished with a fighting 72-ball 50 against New Zealand at the 2019 World Cup. He has many unique records. He scored 10,773 runs at an average of 50.57 in ODIs, is the fifth Indian batsman to surpass the 10,000 -run mark in ODI format. The wicketkeeper-batsman also has 229 ODI sixes – the most for an Indian batsman.
Dhoni got ODI captaincy from Rahul Dravid in 2007 and has won 55 percent of the 200 games he captained the national side (110 wins, 74 defeats, 5 tied, 11 NR). His 200th ODI captaincy assignment came in the Asia Cup 2018 encounter against Afghanistan after Rohit Sharma – the designated skipper for that tournament – was rested for the game, which eventually ended in a tie.
In T20Is, Dhoni played two shy of a 100 games, scoring over 1617 runs at a strike rate of 126.13. More importantly, he led India to glory in the inaugural World T20 in 2007. He has a 58.33 win percentage in this format, with 42 victories in 72 games as captain.
Besides being India’s most successful captain in the limited-overs format, Dhoni also redefined wicketkeeping skills and earned the reputation of being one of the finest stumpers in the world in the last few years. With 829 dismissals in all three formats in international cricket (634 catches, 195 stumpings), Dhoni finishes third on the list of wicketkeepers with most dismissals, only behind Mark Boucher (998) and Adam Gilchrist (905).
It is learnt that left hander Indian batsman Suresh Raina also announced his retirement from international cricket, following Dhoni and kept up his close friendship with Dhoni.
