Former India opener Shikhar Dhawan recently revealed his first interaction with then India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni when the left hander had been selected for his first ODI series in national colours back in 2010. Dhawan recounted the moment in his memoir titled: “The One: Cricket, My Life and More”.
“I wanted to cast him in a Bollywood movie; he looked like a film star with that long hair and easy smile. We were having a chat about my motivation when I suddenly blurted out, ‘I want to play for India and I want to make you a Bollywood hero!’ He threw back his head and laughed,” Dhawan wrote in the book as per PTI.
Dhawan, who played 34 Tests for India scoring 2315 runs, 167 ODIs (6793 runs) and 68 T20 matches (1759 runs), also wrote about how social media was in its nascent stage when he got a breakthrough to play for India.
“When I was trying to break into the Indian side, social media was still nascent and cricketers were under a lot less scrutiny. But other media platforms – print and broadcast – were thriving,” he writes in the book.
“Team selections and individual cricket performances were discussed threadbare and had gained sufficient audience in the country. However, unlike the current times in which social media can transform cricketers from ‘hero’ to ‘zero’ almost overnight, narratives took a lot longer to change back in those days,” he says.
Though he was chosen for the three ODIs, the first and third matches in Kochi and Margao were washed out.
“Before the first match in Kochi, there was so much nervous energy bubbling inside me that I could not sleep the whole night… But when I got up in the morning, it was raining heavily, and all my hopes turned to nought. No action was possible that day,” Dhawan writes.
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“Then, just ahead of the second ODI at Vizag, I took a sleeping pill to soothe my nerves. I thought it was important to sleep well, and I was worried that my performance would suffer if I went through another round of insomnia as I had done on the eve of the first match,” he recalls.
India won the toss and invited Australia to field. Dhawan’s debut game had begun. The Aussies batted first and scored 289. Dhawan opened the batting with Murali Vijay. But in the very first over, he was bowled for a duck off the second ball by Clint McKay.
“I walked off from the crease with a smile pasted on my face, but inside, I was kicking myself hard. I had visualized myself playing dazzling shots and piling up a huge amount of runs for India for so long that I found it difficult to wrap the reality around my head,” he writes.
(With agency inputs)
