Here's why MS Dhoni and Suresh Raina chose August 15 as retirement date

MS Dhoni retired from international cricket on Saturday at 7:29 PM IST exact to leave the nation stunned. There was more to come for the fans as Suresh Raina also called it quits from the highest level joining his captain in the post-retirement journey. Tributes and wishes poured in on social media for the most celebrated duo who won so many matches for India together.

However, what left many surprised was the day they chose to hang their boots. The whole nation celebrated a special Day on August 15 as India completed 73 years of its independence. A tweet is doing the rounds about the same which has tried to decipher the reason why MS Dhoni and Suresh Raina retired together.

The former India skipper’s jersey number is ‘7’ and Raina played for India wearing the jersey numbered ‘3’. If these two numbers are joined, then it becomes 73, the same number of years, the country completed of its independence.

Here’s the tweet:

Suresh Raina responds to the tweet

Interestingly, even Suresh Raina responded to the tweet posting the emoji of the Indian flag. It still remains unknown if the duo deliberately retired on the special day or it was just a coincidence. Both of them were excellent for Indian cricket by all means and their career numbers seamlessly prove it.

While MS Dhoni donned the coloured jersey in 350 ODIs and 98 T20Is apart from playing 90 Tests. He had walked away from the longest format in 2014 itself. Batting at five or six on most of the occasions, the wicket-keeper batsman scored more than 16000 runs in his career with 16 centuries to his name.

Suresh Raina, on the other hand, didn’t play much for India in the last three years. But having made his debut in 2005, played 18 Tests, 226 ODIs and 78 T20Is scoring 768, 5615 and 1604 runs respectively. He is also the only Indian to score a century in all the three formats of the game.

Both Raina and MS Dhoni will continue playing in the Indian Premier League (IPL) for the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and will be seen in action next month when the tournament gets underway on September 19.