Ajay Jadeja disagrees with the selectors' thoughts; says MS Dhoni should play more games

Former India batsman Ajay Jadeja feels that India should look at MS Dhoni beyond his recent statistics. For the first time, MS Dhoni was dropped from India’s T20I squad for the upcoming series against Windies and Australia. While there are different stories circling over the same, the skipper Virat Kohli, on Thursday, cleared that Dhoni himself gave his place away for the youngsters in the shortest format.

BCCI’s selection committee, led by MSK Prasad, recently shocked everyone by taking a big call while also mentioning that the veteran’s T20I career has certainly not ended. However, a few of the former cricketers lauded the move saying that the veteran will anyways not be around until 2020 when the next World T20 is scheduled to play.

Ajay Jadeja, however, has come to the rescue by trying to tell the selectors to not look merely the statistics but beyond that in order to find out how positively MSD has contributed to Indian cricket. He was also of the view that if India wants MS Dhoni to fire in the 2019 World Cup, he needs to play international cricket to regain his touch and not domestic cricket.

He should play as many games

When asked the chief selector whether Dhoni’s T20I career is done, he responded by saying, “Not yet. We want to try out other keepers for the second keeper’s slot,” Ajay Jadeja disagrees with this line of thought.

“It looks like he (MS Dhoni) is probably going to play till 2019 World Cup and not play after that because he has already retired from Test cricket. He is only playing the limited-overs version. So, if he is going to play till 2019 World Cup, especially with the form and the debate and the talk about it and he is not in the same form that everybody would like to see him in you would like to give him as many games as you can. Because there aren’t too many games before the World Cup,” said Jadeja on Cricbuzz.

He further added by saying, “If he plays for Jharkhand, and in domestic cricket, you don’t really gain much from it. If he wants to get back in form and look good where is he going to do that. If that is the case then it is only till the 2019 World Cup, I would make sure that he would play each and every game possible.”

Even Zaheer Khan backed Jadeja’s opinion and agreed by saying that MS Dhoni will bring out his ace game in the upcoming World Cup, and the wicket-keeper batsman deserves the selectors’ faith.

~Written by Aayushmaan Vishwanathan