Kolkata: Mahendra Singh Dhoni, India’s best captain across all formats was reportedly asked to step down by MSK Prasad, Chairman of the National Selection Committee as reported by Hindustan Times.
Dhoni’s meeting with Prasad during the Ranji Trophy semi-final between Jharkhand and Gujarat in the Ranji Trophy sealed the deal and Dhoni made his decision to give up on his captaincy from the truncated versions of the game on January 4 and the BCCI made the announcement on the same day itself.
But, there’s a different twist to the story. In an exclusive interview with Times Now, Prasad denied the fact that the World Cup-winning captain was under any kind of pressure to step down from his captaincy.
He said, “Dhoni informed me about his decision and he was not under any kind of pressure to step down from the captaincy. On the last day of the Ranji trophy semi-final in Nagpur, he approached me first with the decision to quit.”
However, the secretary of the Cricket Association of Bihar (CAB) Aditya Verma said that Dhoni’s decision to step down from the captaincy of the limited overs’ teams was not at all spontaneous and he held BCCI Joint Secretary Amitabh Choudhury responsible for putting pressure on Dhoni to take a call on his future plans.
According to Times Now, Verma stated that Choudhury did not like the fact that Dhoni was mentoring his state team Jharkhand which lost its tie against Gujarat in the Ranji Trophy semis.
Dhoni’s decision to quit as captain has just opened a pandora’s box and there is a notion that he was forced to make such a move.
Another viewpoint is that he quit on his own accord. Only time would tell, as to what actually happened which led to Dhoni calling it quits as a captain. But such is the tale of Indian cricket, rewind to 2008, and Sourav Ganguly took us by surprise by announcing his retirement from international cricket just before the beginning of the Test series against Australia. There were stories doing the rounds that he was asked to leave by the then Selection Committee headed by former Indian opening batsman, K Srikkanth.
Was Dhoni ‘advised’ to bid adieu to captaincy? Ardent fans are eager to know the truth!