CURTAIN CALL FOR DHONI?- Animikh Sengupta
It will be hard to digest, difficult to believe but it is indeed a fact and truth that World Cup winning Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has been dropped from the national T20 team which will play West Indies & Australia in the coming days. Dhoni has been dropped from any format for the first time in his career since his arrival in 2004.
A rising Rishabh Pant & a credible second option Dinesh Kartik has rather forced the selectors to drop the former Indian Captain. The news spreaded like wild fire in Twitter & other social media platforms. Ardent fans of Dhoni showered their disappointment & hate comments towards BCCI. Some even said that they would stop watching Indian Cricket from now onwards. But former players like Sourav Ganguly said that this was on the cards & not at all unexpected. Every fairytale has an ending, every beautiful moonlit night also ends, and Mahendra Singh Dhoni is no exception. If we keep 2020 T20 World Cup in mind then the selectors must have contemplated that MSD may not play till then so Rishabh Pant and Dinesh Kartik are being made ready for the WT20 in 2020. Though selector MSK Prasad has said,
"He [Dhoni] is not going to play the six T20Is [West Indies and Australia] because we are looking at the second keeper's slot. So I think we will retain Rishabh [Pant] and Dinesh Karthik. So they will be getting a chance to keep and bat. It is not the end of Dhoni in T20Is." But despite this remark Dhoni's future in T20's seems bleak and uncertain. Now it will be interesting to see whether Pant can capitalise on the chance he got & cement his place in the team permanently.
If Pant capitalises on the opportunity then it is certain that we will not see Dhoni playing the shortest format of the game ever again. He is in the twilight of his career & it is true that his form has deteriorated drastically even though his fitness is still top notch. It will be interesting to see how the hugely successful former Indian Captain who has every possible ICC Trophies in his cabinet deals with this tumultuous situation & how well he bounces back. But one thing we should keep in mind keeping in mind MS Dhoni & his heroics in the past, you can never ever WRITE HIM OFF!
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