Former India captain and two-time World Cup winner, Mahendra Singh Dhoni announced his retirement from international cricket on Saturday (August 15) via an Instagram post.
The Chennai Super Kings captain, Former India captain and two-time World Cup winner Mahendra Singh Dhoni retired from international cricket on Saturday. “Thanks a lot for ur love and support throughout. from 1929hrs consider me as retired,” Dhoni posted on his instagram handle.
The announcement came a day after he joined his Chennai Super kings teammates in Chennai ahead of this year’s IPL in the UAE.
In nearly 16 years at the highest level, Dhoni led India through its most successful era and has the 2007 T20 WC, 2011 ODI World Cup, and the 2013 Champions Trophy in his cabinet.
The reticent man from Ranchi will, however, go down as one of the finest to have played the game for India, turning up for the country in a whopping 350 ODIs, 90 Tests and 98 T20 Internationals.
Dhoni took over as India’s ODI captain from Rahul Dravid in 2007 and has won 55 percent of the 200 games he captained the national side (110 wins, 74 defeats, 5 tied, 11 NR).
His 200th ODI captaincy assignment came in the Asia Cup 2018 encounter against Afghanistan after Rohit Sharma – the designated skipper for that tournament – was rested for the game, which eventually ended in a tie.
In T20Is, Dhoni played two shy of a 100 games, scoring over 1617 runs at a strike rate of 126.13. More importantly, he led India to glory in the inaugural T20 WC in 2007. He has a 58.33 win percentage in this format, with 42 victories in 72 games as captain.
Besides being India’s most successful captain in the limited-overs format, Dhoni also redefined wicketkeeping skills and earned the reputation of being one of the finest stumpers in the world in the last few years.
With 829 dismissals across the three formats in international cricket (634 catches, 195 stumpings), Dhoni finishes third on the list of wicketkeepers with most dismissals, only behind Mark Boucher (998) and Adam Gilchrist (905).