Sports: MS Dhoni and Suresh Raina clean bowled the whole country on Saturday (August 15), after declaring their retirement from International cricket. MS Dhoni was the first to report his retirement. The former India captain declared his retirement precisely at 7:29 PM IST.
However, Dhoni’s announcement of retirement was speculated every time and then, but It was a major shock to deal with middle-order batsman Suresh Raina deciding to retire as well as the latter was just 33 year old.
According to media reports, Raina said that the decision to retire was a pre-planned one as their India jersey put together make 73 (Dhoni’s jersey number is 7 and Raina’s jersey number is 3). He also added that “there could not be a better day to retire than Independence Day as India completed 73 years.”
“Dhoni began his career on 23 December, 2004 against Bangladesh in Chittagong (now Chattogram), while I made my debut on 30 July, 2005 against Sri Lanka in 2005. Both of us almost began together in international cricket, remained together at CSK, and so we now retired together and will continue to play in IPL together.”, Suresh stated further.
Notably, Suresh Raina announced his retirement on August 15th via Instagram post, he informed the BCCI on August 16th (Sunday) officially as per the protocol. MS Dhoni followed the protocol of informing the Indian board before announcing his retirement at 19:29 hours on Independence Day.
Suresh Raina also said that he knew that Dhoni will be announcing his decision on retirement, further adding that we both “hugged and cried a lot” after announcing their retirements, and partied with fellow CSK teammates for the night.
“After announcing our retirement, we hugged and cried a lot. I, Piyush, Ambati Rayudu, Kedar Jadhav and Karn sat together after that, talked about our careers and our relationship. We partied during the night.” added Suresh Raina.
MS Dhoni will be remembered for his captaincy and other cricketing records. Raina is one of the few cricketers to get a century across all three formats.
IPL 2020 will get underway from September 19 with its final being played on November 10. The lucrative tournament will be played for the second time in UAE. However, the fixtures are still to be confirmed, but it looks like Chennai Super Kings (CSK) will face off against Mumbai Indians in the inaugural contest.