“End of an era,” as they say. The greatest wicket-keeper batsman of all time in limited overs cricket in Mahendra Singh Dhoni retired from all forms of international cricket from 15th of August 2020 at 19:29 hours. The message was conveyed through a simple instagram post which shouldn’t surprise anyone if they had known MS Dhoni well.
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“why at 19:29, though?,” is one question that kept repeating in loop in the minds of all the cricket fans since the great man announced his retirement. The question that even the boss of CSK wanted it to know and the CEO of CSK revealed the reason behind it.
The whole of the cricketing fraternity was paying their tribute to the legendary wicket-keeper batsman from India but CSK CEO, Kasi Viswanathan got a call from his boss N Srinivasan to get to know the reliability of the news and also to know the reason behind 19:29.
Viswanathan took the matter to the man himself and picked the brains from MS Dhoni and called back his boss to reply that,
It was the hour of the sunset at the southern-most part of the country. I think that is why he did it at that time.
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MS Dhoni delayed the inevitable after the 2019 semi-final exit as everyone expected Dhoni to retire immediately after the game but MS Dhoni made himself unavailable for all the tournaments that India had played from July 2019 to this day. When it was dug deep, a source close to Dhoni said,
What would he have said, as a natural reaction you would say, ‘do whatever is right. That was construed as consent. No one cared for the hurt inside, when Indian cricket ‘moved on from him.’ He wanted one last hurrah in the T20 World Cup
As it stands, the 2 time world cup winning captain has hung up his boots and will be waiting to play for CSK in this year’s IPL which everyone is waiting for.
The Independence day connection?
The cricket fans had to endure not one but 2 heartbreaks on the same day as one of the greatest southpaws for India in Suresh Rana joined MS Dhoni in announcing in retirement.
It was the 73rd Independence day for India and MS Dhoni played with a jersey number of 7 and Suresh Raina with 3 and when combined, it gave the 73rd Independence day which is the day both these stalwarts announced their retirement. A consumer of the twitter also tried to decode it and Raina acknowledged it.
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