If he is delivering, why not? If he is not, we will have to look at alternatives, Prasad said.
World Cup winning captain MS Dhoni is ageing and it appears he is not an automatic selection for Team India in the ODI format. Speaking to media persons, chairman of selectors MSK Prasad was questioned if Dhoni was a natural pick, to which he quoted paragraphs from Andre Agassi’s book.
“I was just reading [Andre] Agassi’s book, Open, his life actually started after 30 years. Till then he won two or three. His actual life started after that. He lived with media pressure, ‘When are you going to retire?’ But he played till 36 and he won so many Grand Slams. So you never know. We don’t say it is an automatic this thing… but we will see. We are all stakeholders. We all want the Indian team to do well. If he is delivering, why not? If he is not, we will have to look at alternatives.”
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Prasad was also asked if there were discussion regarding Dhoni to which he replied, “Discussions happen about everybody. It is not just MS. When we pick, when we talk about combinations, we talk about everybody. You will also see in time to come.”
Prasad remained tightlipped about Dhoni’s presence in the 2019 World Cup, he said “We will see, we will see. The legend that he is, we don’t want to make it… but yes we have a plan.”
Diverting from Dhoni, Prasad praised Rishabh Pant’s contribution. “As far as Rishabh is concerned, he is one talent to watch out for the future,” Prasad said. “We have been grooming him for A tours. He went to South Africa on the A tour but he had a pretty ordinary tour but that doesn’t mean he is not on our radar. There is one more A tour coming up. We all know Rishabh Pant more as a Twenty20 player, so we will look at him in that format also.”
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Earlier on Sunday, the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s (BCCI) senior selection committee named the squad for upcoming One-Day Internationals (ODIs) and T20I against Sri Lanka.