'Main Pal Do Pal Ka Shair Hoon': MS Dhoni bids adieu to international cricket

Dhoni, on the day of India's 74th Independence Day, took to Instagram to share a collage of pictures capturing various moments of his illustrious career with the song of Mukesh playing in the background.

Sharing the post, he wrote, "Thanks. Thanks a lot for ur love and support throughout.from 1929 hrs consider me as Retired."

In the collage of photos on Instagram, Dhoni chose to show not only the biggest glory of his career- the World Cup wins- but also his poster getting burnt by some protesters, an incident which took place following India's World Cup debacle in 2007.

Born in Ranchi, Dhoni was picked by then Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly in the Indian side in 2004 in a One Day International (ODI) series against Bangladesh.

Though the wicketkeeper-batsman with long hair had failed to impress the cricket fans by scoring a duck in his first international match, Dhoni rose to fame when he was promoted up to the third position in batting order by Ganguly in a ODI match against Pakistan in 2005.

Grabbing the opportunity to bat up the order with both hands, Dhoni scored a mesmerising knock of 148, almost sealing his berth in the Indian side.

Ending the dearth of Indian wicketkeeper-batsman in the Indian side, Dhoni went on to score multiple match-winning knocks for India including an unbeaten 183 against Sri Lanka, in the successive years.

After the senior players like Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid opted not to play in the inaugural T20 World Cup in 2007, Dhoni was given the charge of the Indian team in the mega tournament.

Surprising world cricket, the Ranchi man went on to lead India to victory, earning praises for his cool-headed captaincy.

Slowly and steadily, Dhoni was handed over the captaincy of the national team in both ODI and Test cricket.

Courting a controversy, the 'Captain Cool' took a tough and surprising decision in early 2008 by not picking senior batsmen Ganguly and Dravid for the trilateral ODI series against Australia and Sri Lanka.

But the controversy did not gain much pace as Dhoni not only went on to win the particular trilateral series but also gave the Indians a taste of the 50-over World Cup after 28 years in 2011.

Besides winning the Champions Trophy in 2013, Dhoni led India to the number one spot in Test rankings.

Dhoni, who started his career as an explosive batsman, later on turned himself into a dependable finisher. He is the fourth Indian ODI batsman to score more than 10,000 runs after Tendulkar, Ganguly and Dravid.

Though his ODI and T20 batting was always praiseworthy, Dhoni did struggle in the Test format with an average of 38.09 in 90 matches.

Once again surprising all his fans, Dhoni retired from Test cricket in 2014 and resigned as the ODI and T20 captain in 2017, getting succeeded by Virat Kohli.

After the 2019 Cricket World Cup, where he was criticised for slow batting, Dhoni took a long sabbatical from cricket and went on to train with the Indian personnel in Kashmir.

However, the former skipper is likely to participate in the 13th edition of Indian Premier League (IPL), which is scheduled to begin in September.

In IPL, Dhoni led Chennai Super Kings to tournament victories in 2010, 2011 and 2018.