An era ended in Indian cricket on August 15, 2020, as MS Dhoni and Suresh Raina quit international cricket together. At 7:29 PM, Dhoni shared a post on Instagram to quit the game. Few minutes later, Raina joined him on his retirement journey and retired from international cricket.
Both were in the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) bubble before IPL 2020 when they retired. 2 days after their retirements, Raina revealed the reason behind him and Dhoni retiring together.
Speaking to Dainik Jagran, Raina revealed, “We had already made up our minds to retire on Saturday (August 15). Dhoni’s jersey number is 7 and mine is 3 – put it together and it makes 73. And on August 15, India completed 73 years of independence, so there couldn’t have been a better day.”
“Dhoni began his career on 23 December (2004) against Bangladesh in Chittagong, while I made my debut on 30 July (2005) against Sri Lanka. Both of us almost began together in international cricket, remained together at CSK, and so we now retired together,” Raina added.
Both Dhoni and Raina had long international careers. Dhoni, the only captain to win all three ICC white-ball trophies, played 90 Tests, 350 ODIs and 98 T20Is. Raina donned 18 Test, 226 ODI and 78 T20I caps.
