When VB Chandrasekhar convinced N Srinivasan to pick MS Dhoni over Virender Sehwag in IPL 2008

The former Indian cricketer VB Chandrasekhar’s demise on Thursday left the cricketing fraternity shocked. Rather the police have confirmed that he committed suicide following incurring losses in the cricket business. His throwback stories related to the Indian cricket are going viral now. The man himself had shared an interesting one of how he convinced N Srinivasan to go for MS Dhoni in the inaugural IPL auction instead of Virender Sehwag.

Chandrasekhar was the chief selector as well as the director of cricket operations of the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) during the first season of the Indian T20 extravaganza. In conversation with Sportskeeda in January 2018, he revealed the way he convinced the CSK boss to go for Dhoni under whom India had won the inaugural World T20 in 2007.

Though Srinivasan was adamant on picking Sehwag in the team for long, Chandrasekhar had his say in the end and sought the franchise owner’s permission to go for MS Dhoni in the auction.

Why not Virender Sehwag?

“Before the auctions in 2008, Mr N Srinivasan asked me, “Who are you going to pick?” I said Dhoni. He asked, “Why not Virender Sehwag? I said Sehwag would not provide me with the kind of inspiration that the crowd will be looking forward to, whereas Dhoni is a captain, a wicket-keeper and a batsman who can change the match situation on his own. So I asked him if I could look for him,” Chandrasekhar had said.

Srinivasan wasn’t entirely sure about the move only for him to finally approve Dhoni’s pick the next morning. Further elaborating his plans about building the team, Chandrasekhar had said that the franchise had first kept Rs 1.1 million aside for MS Dhoni but then had to change the strategy after knowing about the other team ready to spend Rs 1.3 million for him.

“I increased my amount to 1.4 million and still tried to buy the team because, with a total of 5 million for the entire team, 1.4 million would have gone for Dhoni himself. But with the auction approaching, someone said that Dhoni would go for 1.8 million. So I told him that if Dhoni would go for anything beyond 1.5 million, I’d let him go because I couldn’t let go a team, as then there would have been Dhoni and nobody else.

“Mr Srinivasan was upset that we couldn’t get Dhoni because somewhere he believed that Dhoni was the future and I had convinced him that he was going to be the future youth icon,” Chandrasekhar said. Eventually, Dhoni was snapped by CSK for a whopping Rs 1.5 million and the rest is history.

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