File image of MS Dhoni
Former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar on Monday revealed another humble side of veteran wicketkeeper-batsman MS Dhoni wherein he said that the cricketer gives up his business class tickets to sit to TV crew members on flights.
Top performers of the team are awarded the business class tickets along with the coaching staff members unlike every member of the team owing to the limited number of business class tickets. But Dhoni, despite it being a reward, gives up his luxury to be with the TV crew members.
"The Indian team has a lovely system of rewarding its players, especially in home matches. As most Indian cricket followers know, during the Indian domestic international season, both teams travel in a special chartered flight from one venue to the next.
"The flight also carries the technical TV crew who have to rig the cables for the next game. There are limited seats in business class and the captains, coaches and managers of the teams get these.
"It is here that those Indian players, who have done well in their previous game, get to sit there as a reward rather than the economy class behind.
"Mahendra Singh Dhoni hardly ever sat in business class on these flights even when he was the skipper as he would prefer to sit with the real champs of the TV coverage, the cameramen and the sound engineers," Gavaskar wrote in his column for the Mid-Day.
Well it seems even present Indian skipper Virat Kohli picked up this trend as revealed in a twet by Michael Vaughan during India's tour of Australia in 2018/19. Vaughan revealed that Kohli and his wife Anushka Sharma had given up business class tickets to allow the pacers to relax on their flight from Adelaide to Perth.
