Former India opener Shikhar Dhawan surprised everyone by the sudden announcement of his retirement. Even though it was expected given Dhawan didn't play most of the IPL season, didn't register himself for the Delhi Premier League and hadn't played for India for more than 20 months. However, the suddenness of it all took many by a surprise as 'Mr ICC' for India decided to call time on his illustrious career, especially in the ODI format being at the forefront of India's success in the Champions Trophy 2013 and 2017 and World Cup 2015 and 2019.
After almost a month, Dhawan has revealed that he didn't have any inspiration to play domestic cricket and playing from just one IPL to another and putting in that two-three months of hard work wasn't enough for him to continue playing. "I didn't want to play domestic cricket, which I started playing at the age of 18 or 19 and I didn't have that inspiration from inside to play that (form of) cricket," Dhawan told PTI on the sidelines of the Legends League Cricket, the tournament he signed up for after retiring.
"If I look back, the last two years of my cricketing career, I wasn't playing much of international cricket and I was playing IPL to IPL, so I wasn't playing much of cricket (overall). I thought that, 'alright, I've played enough, and I need to give it a break because I'm not playing that much cricket, so you lose the touch as well
"I thought that continuing IPL and just coming up with two, three months of hard work won't be enough for me to go and play," Dhawan, who played just five games in IPL 2024 leading the Punjab Kings said. Dhawan suffered a shoulder injury and he didn't play a single match after that and Sam Curran led the side in his absence.
"So that was the reason for me to just call it off, and yeah, I was very happy and satisfied and content with whatever I achieved in my career, and very, very grateful for everything," Dhawan, who is a bonafide IPL legend having scored 6769 runs in 222 matches, further said.
Dhawan played 269 matches overall for India at the highest level across formats, amassing 10,867 runs with ODI being his best format.
