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MS Dhoni ( Image Credit: Twitter)
Former India head coach Ravi Shastri brought his tenure to end after the team exited from the 20-20 World Cup in 2021. Under Shastri, India managed to become a lethal and fearless outfit in home and away conditions. India won two Test series Down Under and also reached the finals of the World Test Championship (WTC). He also managed to make India unbeatable at home in the white-ball formats and instilled a great amount of self-belief.
Shastri was also at forefront of change in leadership in the Indian team as MS Dhoni resigned from captaincy in the limited-overs format in 2017. Virat Kohli took charge and Shastri managed to have a great bond with both cricketers. In the past few days, the former India coach opened about several issues in the team. He spoke about Kohli’s and BCCI over the ODI captaincy issue. He also recalled some of the interesting stories from the time he was the coach.
On Sunday (December 26) Shastri, during an interaction with Star Sports, spilled the beans on how Dhoni announced his retirement from the longest format of the game. After the culmination of the Boxing Day Test in 2014 Down Under, Dhoni suddenly decided to call it quits from Test cricket. Shastri, who was team director back then, said nobody knew about the wicketkeeper batter’s decision.
“It came as a huge surprise in Melbourne when he said ‘I am finishing with Test cricket’. In fact, he just casually walked up to me and said, ‘Ravi bhai, I need to speak to the boys’. I said ‘sure’. So I thought he would say something; we’d drawn a great game, batted last day. To draw that match was tremendous stuff.
“And he comes out, bolt out of the blue, ‘I am done with Test cricket’. And I just saw the faces around the dressing room, they were in a state of shock, most of them. But that’s MS for you,” Shastri said.
Shastri also revealed that Dhoni wanted to continue playing the white-ball formats for India and that is the reason he decided to quit playing Test cricket.