Shikhar Dhawan recently declared that he won’t be taking part in the Indian Premier League (IPL). Only last season he was the captain of the Punjab Kings (PBKS) but now the destructive southpaw has hung of his boots from both domestic cricket and IPL. A month ago, the 38-year old announced his retirement from international cricket.
The ace opener has now revealed that didn’t find enough motivation and inspiration to continue playing domestic cricket and the Indian Premier League. He also claimed that he has no inspiration left to play well in domestic cricket to fight for a place national team and thus have opted to retire from the game.
Dhawan reveals reason to not play IPL & Domestic Cricket
“I didn’t want to play domestic cricket, which I started playing at the age of 18 or 19 and I didn’t have that inspiration from inside to play that (form of) cricket,” Dhawan told PTI.
“If I look back, the last two years of my cricketing career, I wasn’t playing much of international cricket and I was playing IPL to IPL, so I wasn’t playing much of cricket (overall),” Dhawan added.
Shikhar Dhawan‘s last international outing came in 2022 when he played against Bangladesh in 2022. His last Test match came way back in 2018 while he last played T20I in 2021. He wasn’t sought for the ODI World Cup 2023 as Rahul Dravid and Co decided to entrust their faith on a young Shubman Gill.
Dhawan also reveals lack of cricket to be another main reason for him opting to retire. He claims that has played enough. And now without much cricket, he is losing his touch. And finally, he further claimed that playing IPL cricket for just 2-3 months won’t be enough for him to make it to the national team, thereby forcing him to take the decision to hang up his boots.
“I thought that, ‘alright, I’ve played enough, and I need to give it a break because I’m not playing that much cricket, so you lose the touch as well,” he said as he opened about his mindset before announcing the big decision. I thought that continuing IPL and just coming up with two, three months of hard work won’t be enough for me to go and play. So that was the reason for me to just call it off, and yeah, I was very happy and satisfied and content with whatever I achieved in my career, and very, very grateful for everything,” Dhawan concluded.
