Dinesh Karthik urges BCCI to retire MS Dhoni’s No.7 jersey
Dinesh Karthik, who MS Dhoni replaced in the Indian squad at the time of his debut, has urged the BCCI to retire the #7 jersey that Dhoni donned after Javagal Srinath wore it with distinction. Last year, the BCCI had retired Sachin Tendulkar’s #10 jersey after Shardul Thakur donned it for a match.
Even though Dinesh Karthik was the biggest victim of MS Dhoni’s remarkable rise in Indian cricket - the Tamil Nadu wicket-keeper was reduced to nothing but a domestic stalwart for the majority of his career - the duo share a great deal of respect for each other. Karthik has always been an unabashed fan of MS Dhoni and now that the latter has retired from international cricket, the KKR skipper urged the BCCI to retire Dhoni's No.7 jersey forever.
“This is the last photo taken after our semis at the World Cup.lots of great memories through this journey. I hope the @bcci retire the #7 jersey in white-ball cricket. Good luck with your second innings in life, I’m sure you’ll have a lot of surprises for us there too,” Karthik wrote on Twitter alongside an image of him with MS Dhoni after the 2019 World Cup semi-final.
This is the last photo taken after our semis at the World Cup.lots of great memories through this journey. I hope the @bcci retire the #7 jersey in white ball cricket ❤️
— DK (@DineshKarthik) August 16, 2020
Good luck with your second innings in life , I’m sure you’ll have a lot of surprises for us there too 🙂💖 pic.twitter.com/4kX4uPhPOO
The duo's friendship dates back to the early 2000s, when they played against each other many times in Duleep and Deodhar Trophy, with Bihar failing to cross past the East Zone leg, where Bengal and Odisha were the two strongest sides. However, once Dhoni did what he did in Nairobi, chances for Karthik, a perennial underperformer at the international stage, became really slim. However, the Tamil Nadu man retained a deep credibility that Dhoni acknowledged many times during his captaincy tenure.