‘He said ‘I am not getting the chance where I can express myself’’ – S Sreesanth shares untold story featuring MS Dhoni

The legendary skipper MS Dhoni had to grind hard to make it to India’s squad. Despite doing well in the domestic circuit, the stumper-batter was not considered for national selection for quite a long time before making his debut in 2004. He failed to open his account on debut against Bangladesh and the bad patch continued for the initial few games.

However, in his fifth ODI, skipper Sourav Ganguly sent him to bat at number three and he hit 148 runs against Pakistan, which eventually shaped his career going forward. Meanwhile, Dhoni played his fourth ODI in Kochi where he met S Sreesanth, who was one of the staff players. The former India pacer recently shared the story of it and stated that the cricketer told him that he is not being able to express himself well and not being able to contribute much in his first few games.

“Dhoni bhai came and spoke with us (support players). I have not shared this story anywhere. When we were standing there, Dhoni bhai said ‘I want to express myself. I am not getting the chance where I can express myself’. There was one more player with me from Kerala. Dhoni was talking with us. We even jokingly told him, ‘Dhoni bhai, even we will come in the team in 1-2 years’. He said with a smile, ‘Yes, sure. Why not. Just keep working hard’,” Sreesanth was quoted as saying by NDTV.

“At the dinner party, we just had a casual interaction. But I told him, ‘Don’t worry. Something tells me (you will play and do well soon).’ I have the habit of motivating the players sitting on the bench. You won’t believe, the next match he played he scored a hundred,” Sreesanth added.

Meanwhile, the duo went on to play together for the next few years and even won the T20 World Cup in 2007 and the ODI World Cup in 2011. Sreesanth eventually labelled Dhoni’s journey as crazy and added that he will mention all these stories in his autobiography.