Not being able to finish games as he used to might have led to MS Dhoni’s retirement decision, says RP Singh

Despite MS Dhoni and Ravindra Jadeja’s brave efforts in the 2019 World Cup semifinal game, India faced defeat at the hands of New Zealand and made an unfortunate exit from the tournament. Following that, MS Dhoni took an indefinite sabbatical from cricket and eventually there were speculations that the former captain might hang his boots any time. These speculations only came true in August when Dhoni announced his retirement from international cricket.

In this regard, former India pacer RP Singh, who shared the field with Dhoni, believes that fans could’ve seen the former captain participate in the edition of the T20 World Cup in Australia had it not been postponed. According to Singh, it was as if Dhoni had somehow not been at his best in finishing games, as he used to.

“Of course, it has. He has been a massive player in T20s so he wanted to wait until the big event. Besides that, age and fitness also contributed to his decision. If you leave aside IPL, he hardly got any opportunity to display his batting for India in ODIs for the last 12-15 months,” RP Singh was quoted as saying by cricket.com.

“In the 2019 World Cup, he may have wanted to bat at number 4 but that was not done because of team management and in the lower order, he barely got a chance until the semi-final game. Oddly, he also was not able to finish off games the way he used to earlier. Maybe that also gave him the signal that he was reaching his end and he needed to take a call on his future,” he added.