'Jealous' people want 'ultimate team man' MS Dhoni out, claims Ravi Shastri
Ravi Shastri has come out in defence of the under-fire MS Dhoni claiming that the team management doesn't have any problem with the latter’s performance for the team. Ajit Agarkar and VVS Laxman had questioned Dhoni place in the T20I side after India’s 40-run defeat to New Zealand in Rajkot.
After India lost the second T20I of the three-match series to New Zealand, in Rajkot, by a humiliating 40 runs, Laxman and Agarkar had questioned whether Dhoni was good enough to play in the shortest format for India. While Agarkar had pointed out that Dhoni came in with almost half the innings left, Laxman pointed out that he started off with a strike rate of 80 while chasing a mammoth total.
Shastri, however, rejected the idea that Dhoni was responsible for the defeat and claimed that “jealous people” wanted the former skipper out after a "couple of bad days".
"Looks like there are a lot of jealous people around, who just want Dhoni to have a couple of bad days.... There are a few people who are waiting to see the end of MS Dhoni. But great players like him decide their own future," Shastri told Bengali daily Anandabazar Patrika, reported IANS.
"It (the criticism) doesn't make a difference to me. In our mind, we know where Dhoni stands within the team. He is an ultimate team man. He was a great leader and now an ultimate team man."
While Dhoni has not been in the best of form recently, he still averaged an impressive 65.09 in ODIs this year and a decent 33.80 in T20s. While critiquing the current style of reporting, Shastri, who was a TV pundit before taking up the head coach role, said that when asked questions, former cricketers and experts have to give out controversial statements.
"Not so long ago I used to do television and people used to ask me questions. You need to answer questions to make a show happen,” he added.
"Dhoni is a superstar. He is one of our greatest cricketers. So he is always going to be a great topic. He is always going to be a topic because he is a legend. When you have a career as glorious as that, you become a topic on television."