“He Needs to Decide When He Wants to Go Out”: Yuvraj Singh on MS Dhoni

MS Dhoni has made himself unavailable from the International cricket ever since the ICC World Cup semi-final. At first, he served the army and then the news came that he wouldn’t be available till November. In his absence, his retirement debate has been increasing day by day. However, his former India teammate Yuvraj Singh said it would be “unfair” to talk about Dhoni’s retirement.

“I think it’s unfair to him. The guy (Dhoni) has done so much for Indian cricket. He has been the most successful Indian captain, so you got to give him time,” Yuvraj Singh shared his thoughts on the sidelines of ‘The Sports Movement’ summit organised by India On Track. “He needs to decide when he wants to go out. He needs to take that call. If he wants to still play, that’s his call and we need to respect that.”

Yuvraj, who announced his retirement from international cricket earlier this year at the age of 37, shared that it would be difficult to fill in the gaps when Dhoni will decide to hang up his boots. The former all-rounder also told that it is not fair to compare the youngster Rishabh Pant with a cricketer like MS Dhoni.

“It is unfair to compare him (Rishabh) with MS (Dhoni). It took a lot of years to become M S Dhoni and it will take a lot of years for Rishabh Pant to go close to him,” Yuvraj said. “MS Dhoni’s replacement is going to take a lot of time.”

However, Rishabh Pant is in the news for his rough patch. Earlier, Ravi Shastri also criticised Rishabh Pant, saying that he will be ‘rapped in the knuckles’ soon. He was mostly referring to the youngster’s rash shots against West Indies in the recently-concluded series. The head coach further said that Pant needs to play “sensible cricket” because his reckless batting let the team down.

Even MSK Prasad has also said that they are going to keep an eye on the wicketkeeper batsmen like Ishan Kishan, Sanju Samson and a few others as backup wicket-keepers to take the pressure off Rishabh Pant.

Although he got support from former players like Gautam Gambhir, it would be interesting to see whether the team management would continue with him or they chose someone else.