Lauding legendary Indian wicketkeeper-batter MS Dhoni for having made the cricket number one sports and inspiring many to play it, Union Sports Minister Anurag Thakur on Friday is hopeful of many players eager to surpass former skipper ‘Thala’ record in the sport.
Earlier on Friday, it was reported that the BCCI retired Dhoni’s iconic No.7 jersey as a gesture to the World Cup-winning captain. Thakur’s reaction comes after this news.
“Mahendra Singh Dhoni has earned crores of fans during his career. Be it IPL or Indian Cricket, from 2007 to 2011, from T20 to ODI World Cup to Test Championship, Dhoni made the Indian cricket team the number one team. After watching him, many people took inspiration and started playing cricket. Hopefully, in the future many such players will come who will surpass Dhoni,” said Thakur to ANI.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) vice president, Rajeev Shukla, has welcomed the decision to retire MS Dhoni’s No.7 jersey and hailed his contribution to Indian cricket.
Dhoni is the second Indian player after the legendary batter Sachin Tendulkar for whom BCCI has decided to retire his jersey. Tendulkar had jersey No.10 and BCCI retired it in 2017.
Shukla welcomed the decision.
“The decision of BCCI is an honour for MS Dhoni because of his contribution to Indian cricket. He has immensely contributed to world cricket and Indian cricket. This is a good decision. No.7, which was associated with him, cannot be diluted…someone else who could have had that number,” Shukla told ANI.
During a career that spanned over 15 years, Dhoni left a long-lasting mark in the world of cricket. He is the only captain to have won all major white-ball ICC tournaments, namely ICC Cricket World Cup, ICC T20 World Cup and ICC Champions Trophy.
In the long-format career, Dhoni played 90 matches, scoring 4,876 runs at an average of 38.09. He scored six centuries and 33 half-centuries, with the best score of 224. He is the 14th-highest scorer for India in Tests.
As a captain, he led India in 60 Test matches, out of which they won 27 matches, lost 18 and drew 15. With a win percentage of 45.00, he is one of India’s most successful skippers across all eras. He led Team India to the number one ranking in the ICC Test Rankings. He is also the only Indian skipper to whitewash Australia in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, doing so in the 2010-11 and 2012-13 series.
Dhoni’s strongest format was the ODIs. In 350 ODIs, he scored 10,773 runs at an average of 50.57. He scored 10 centuries and 73 fifties for India, with the best score of 183*. He is India’s fifth-highest scorer in ODIs (with Sachin Tendulkar at the top with 18,426 runs). He is also the 11th most successful ODI batter of all time. The fact that he managed to score 10,000-plus runs at an average of over 50 while coming down the order makes his statistics even more astonishing.
He led India in 200 ODI matches, winning 110, losing 74. Five matches were tied while 11 failed to produce a result, he has a win percentage of 55.
With 229 sixes, he is the fifth-highest six-hitter of all time in ODIs and also has the second-highest sixes by an Indian next to Rohit Sharma (275 sixes). He is also the sixth-fastest player to reach 10,000 ODI runs, doing so in 273 innings.
‘Mahi’, as he is known to the fans, played 98 T20Is for India, scoring 1,617 runs at an average of 37.60, at a strike rate of 126.13. He had two half-centuries in the format, with the best score of 56.
He led India in 72 T20Is, winning 41, losing 28, one being tied and two failing to produce results. His win percentage is 56.94. (ANI)
