Kiran More reveals the circumstances which led to MS Dhoni’s India selection
MS Dhoni – the name is enough for a cricket fan to reminisce his journey donning the India jersey. The man led India to three ICC trophies – T20 World Cup, Champions Trophy and 50-over World Cup – and also took the team to number one position in Test for the first time. However, it took some time for him to get picked in the Indian team for the first time.
Kiran More, the chief selector in 2004, has now revealed the circumstances in which MS Dhoni was selected in the team for Bangladesh tour. Prior to that, team India was shuffling wicket-keepers in the longest format of the game and Rahul Dravid had donned the gloves in the 50-over format. He was doing well to be fair and had taken 71 catches and affected 13 stumpings in 73 ODIs.
However, the selectors felt he was being overloaded and they thought he should be allowed to focus on his batting. Even though Parthiv Patel and Dinesh Karthik were around, More revealed that the selection panel wanted a player who can hit the ball really big and also be decent behind the stumps.
“Rahul Dravid had already kept in 75 One-day Internationals, so we were looking for a wicketkeeper-batsman who could whack the ball and we could give Rahul a respite,” he said while speaking to WV Raman on his podcast ‘Inside Out.’
MS Dhoni was a complete package, says Kiran More
— W V Raman (@wvraman) December 4, 2020
At the same time, MS Dhoni had shone with the bat for India A on their tour to Kenya and his name was around for the same reason. This led to the selectors picking him and it changed Indian cricket forever. Kiran More also termed that Dhoni was a complete package and the decision did wonders eventually.
“There was surely something special about the way he approached the game. We picked him for India A to Kenya, where he had a good tour and scored over 600 runs. We already had players like Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh but when Dhoni came, he was a complete package and took the Indian cricket by storm,” More further added.
