MS Dhoni ended his Test career in December 2014, when many felt he had lots of red-ball cricket still left in him. The Boxing Day Test ten summers ago in Australia was the 90th of a glittering career that saw Dhoni winning every ICC trophy, including the Test mace.
Retiring as India’s most successful Test captain at that time, Dhoni’s leadership and calm head even in the most testing situations earned him the title of ‘Captain Cool’. But there were times during a Test match when Dhoni felt like ‘yaar yeh khatam karke chalte hain na (let’s finish this and go back).”
Dhoni shared the reason behind that feeling of his at a promotional event.
“For me, the most difficult time during a Test match was the fifth day, which is the last day, and there is 100 percent surety that this will be a draw and you still need to keep (wickets) for maybe two and a half sessions. That was most tiring,” said Dhoni.
The wicketkeeper-batsman, who also played 350 ODIs and 98 T20Is, shared the lighter side of his workload with pads on behind the stumps in situations where a draw is the only result possible even if the entire fifth day is played out.
“You see there is no result that is happening, you are just going through the motion. Bowlers will try to take wickets, batsmen will try to score runs. But if there is no result in the nearest future (sight), then you are like ‘yaar, yeh khatam karke chalte hain na’. Why do we need to be here?'” he said.
It’s one of the reasons, says Dhoni, that he is happy to see so many result-oriented Tests now even if home teams prepare pitches of the nature that suits their strengths.
“So I love the fact that there is a big change in the way people have started playing Test cricket,” he said. “Imagine telling someone who doesn’t know about cricket, ‘we play over five days, we start at 9:30 and 4:30 is the scheduled end of day’s play but we play till 5 o’clock; and after five days sometimes we don’t get a result’.
“For the game it is not very nice. So I love how there are more results in today’s world.”
