Sportsperson Cricketer
- Name: Mahendra Singh Dhoni
- Born: 7 July 1981 (age 38)
- Place of Birth: Ranchi, Jharkhand
- Education: St. Xavier’s College, Jharkhand
- Occupation: Cricketer
- Years active: – present
- Spouse: Sakshi Dhoni (m. 2010)
Mahendra Singh Dhoni is amongst most successful Indian Cricketer. He started learning cricket at a very young age and played well in school and college tournaments.
Soon he became a goalkeeper in a local Football team. A cricket coach, KR Banerjee noticed him while goalkeeping and asked him to try his hand at wicket keeping which landed him into becoming a local star.
He had completed his schooling from DAV Jawahar Vidya Mandir, Shyamali, Ranchi and for higher education; he joined the St. Xavier College, Ranchi to pursue a bachelor degree but could not complete his graduation because of some issues.
Although he was playing really well for Bihar since 1998 but he was not getting a chance for playing in the Indian team. He moved to West Bengal and got the post of ticket collector at Kharagpur railway station and continued his job for 3 years. Eventually, on 23 December 2004, he made his One-Day International debut against Bangladesh at Chittagong.
The same year, he got selected for India A tour of Zimbabwe and Kenya, where he performed exceptionally well. He made his Test and T20 debut in 2005 and 2006 respectively. In 2007, he was offered captaincy of the Indian team on the recommendation of Sachin Tendulkar and since then, he took the Indian team to heights like never before.
Under his captaincy, India won the T20 World Cup 2007, World Cup 2011, Champions Trophy 2013, and India became the No. 1 Test team and remained at the top for 18 months.
Dhoni has won many accolades during his career such as: Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award in 2007, Padma Shri in 2009, MTV Youth Icon of the Year in 2006, ICC ODI Player of the Year in 2008, 2009, CNN-IBN Indian of the Year in Sports, ICC Award for Spirit of Cricket in 2011 and Padma Bhushan in 2018.
Cases/Controversies
- In 2007, 40 residents of his locality filed a plea against the Ranchi Regional Development Authority (RRDA) for wasting 15,000 liters of water in M.S. Dhoni’s home in daily maintenance of the swimming pool. At that time, his locality was going through a severe water crisis.
- He was involved in a tax evasion controversy over his Hummer H2, as the vehicle needed a registration charge of ₹4 lakhs in India, but it was mistakenly registered as a Mahindra Scorpio, the charge of registering which is ₹53,000.
- During the 2013 IPL spot-fixing, Dhoni was on the radar of the Supreme Court. He was in the contact with Gurunath Meiyappan, who was named in betting charge sheet. Later, Dhoni called Gurunath Meiyappan, a “mere cricket enthusiast.” However, Meiyappan was a full-fledged team owner.