Birthday MS Dhoni: In 2008, Chandrasekhar, who worked as the chief selector of Chennai Super Kings, once told the whole story in an interview. He had said that Mahendra Singh Dhoni was not the first choice of CSK owner Srinivasan.
Srinivasan’s first choice was Sehwag, not Dhoni
Mahendra Singh Dhoni, one of the most successful captains of IPL, turned 42 today. After making his team Chennai Super Kings the champion for the fifth time this year, he is now preparing to play again next year. Mahi’s playing next year is not fixed. There is a team in IPL whose fan following is amazing. Wherever the team went this year, thousands of fans came to support the team. Instead of the home team, fans were seen only in the jersey of that team.
This team is none other than Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings (CSK). CSK is the superhit team of IPL. Wherever he played this season, there was a flood of yellow. Fans felt that this would be Dhoni’s last season, but Mahi wanted to gift his fans by playing for one more year. From North to South and from East to West, Dhoni dominated everywhere, but did you know that MS, who became the plate for the people of Chennai, was not the first choice of CSK in the 2008 auction. Team owner N Srinivasan wanted to buy another player.
This drama happened before 2008 IPL auction
Chandrasekhar, who served as the chief selector of Chennai Super Kings in 2008, once told the whole story in an interview. He had said that Mahendra Singh Dhoni was not the first choice of CSK owner Srinivasan. Chandrasekhar said that before the auction in 2008, N Srinivasan had asked me who are you going to buy? I told him Dhoni. On this he asked, why not Virender Sehwag? Srinivasan’s first choice was explosive batsman Sehwag.
Chandrasekhar said that I told him about Dhoni’s utility. I said Sehwag won’t give me that level of motivation whereas Dhoni is a captain, a wicketkeeper and a batsman who can turn matches on his own so I asked him should we buy him? Chandrasekhar told that Srinivasan’s mind changed overnight and he came in the morning and told me that Dhoni has to be bought. However, we were afraid that some other franchise might spend more than us to include Dhoni in their team.
Chandrasekhar has told about this that thinking about the auction, I increased my spending amount for Dhoni to $ 1.4 million and even after that tried to make the team i.e. playing-11, because we have five million dollars for the whole team. Were only But as the auction came to a close, someone said that Dhoni could fetch a bid of up to $1.8 million. So I told him that if Dhoni gets more than 1.5 million bids, I will let him go, because we have to make a complete team.
Dhoni was eventually bought by CSK for $1.5 million. After this, Dhoni included Chennai Super Kings in the most successful teams of IPL. At present, Dhoni is not only the captain of Chennai Super Kings but also the identity of the franchise. This team with the highest brand value has so far won the IPL title five times under Mahi’s captaincy. Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who has won five titles to Chennai Super Kings in 2010, 2011, 2018, 2021 and 2023, tops the list of most liked players in IPL.
Dhoni retired from international cricket on 15 August 2020. However, he continued to play in the IPL. Dhoni has so far scored 5082 runs in 250 IPL matches at an average of 38.79 and a strike rate of 135.92. Talking about international cricket, he scored 4876 runs in 90 Tests, 10,773 runs in 350 ODIs and 1617 runs in 98 T20s.