Priyanshi Pareek
The captain cool played his last match for the country in the 2019 World Cup Semi-Finals against New Zealand.
The BCCI made the decision to ‘retire’ M S Dhoni’s No.7 jersey as a tribute to his remarkable contributions to Indian cricket. Since his last match in 2019, no other player has donned the No.7 shirt. Similarly, Sachin Tendulkar’s No.10 remains unworn by any other player post his retirement in 2013, except for pacer Shardul Thakur, who briefly wore it on his ODI debut against Sri Lanka in 2017, facing significant social media backlash.
Since then, no one has played with a jersey with number 10 written on the back.
According to BCCI vice-president Rajeev Shukla, the Board took the decision on Thursday.
“He is a legendary player. His contribution to Indian as well as world cricket is immense. To honour his contribution, the decision to retire number seven has been taken by the BCCI,” Shukla told PTI.
Retiring jerseys of legends is a common practice in various sports. For instance, the Chicago Bulls retired Michael Jordan’s iconic No.23 jersey after his basketball career. In cricket, Dinesh Karthik, whose international tenure overlapped with Dhoni’s, was among the first to advocate for retiring the No.7 jersey following Dhoni’s retirement in 2020. Both Karthik and Dhoni were part of the unfortunate World Cup semifinal against New Zealand.
“Hope the BCCI retires the No.7 jersey in white ball cricket,” Karthik had posted back then. And, now it happened.
These days a meme ‘Thala for a reason’ is getting viral.
Eg.
- 18 (Virat Kohli) = 1-8 = -7 Thala for a reason
- 10 (Sachin) – 3 (Raina) = 7 Thala for a reason
These memes were started by the fans of MS Dhoni for supporting their idol.
Slowly the support turned into trolls for the trollers and they started comparing it with everything.
After the retirement of jersey fans are again saying THALA FOR A REASON.