Former Indian cricketers unhappy with Dhoni being dropped from T20I team

Former Indian cricketers unhappy with Dhoni being dropped: All sorts of opinions are coming regarding Dhoni’s exclusion from the T20I team.

Given the stature of the news involving the dropping of former India captain and current wicket-keeper batsman Mahendra Singh Dhoni from the T20I squad, opinions, numerous of them, were expected to come and so they have.

In the 93 T20Is that Dhoni has played, he has scored 1,487 runs at an average of 36.17 and a strike rate of 127.09. Since relinquishing from the captaincy in the format (January last year), Dhoni has played 20 T20Is, scoring 375 runs at an average of 41.66 and a strike rate of 143.67.

With numbers in the last 22 months better than his overall career, Dhoni has still been dropped from the format. Perhaps, it could have been an effort to ready others for a role which Dhoni has played since 2006.

With the ICC World Twenty20 scheduled to he held in 2020, whether Dhoni will continue playing till then is unclear as of now. Hence, it is always a better option to have able replacements in the squad.

Additionally, the selectors are also finding the second wicket-keeper behind Dhoni for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019. Giving more opportunities to Rishabh Pant and Dinesh Karthik might just give the selectors a better picture on whom to name alongside Dhoni, which seems to be a fair call.

Former India batsman Vinod Kambli took to Twitter to express his disappointment on the whole issue. “MS Dhoni needs to be in the squad leading upto the world cup and dropping him now doesn’t make sense to me,” the 46-year old tweeted. Kambli also embedded a poll alongside his tweet regarding the selectors’ decision.

Speaking on a show for Cricbuzz.com, former cricketers in Zaheer Khan and Ajay Jadeja too opined on the issue. Khan said that dropping Dhoni won’t have any affect on the ODI line-up and that Dhoni has much more to offer than just batting in the 50-overs format.

Whereas, Jadeja was of the opinion that if the selectors are looking to play Dhoni in the World Cup 2019, they should have played him in each and every match from hereon.

Watch the full video below:

Read some of the latest Twitter reactions on Dhoni being dropped below: