India vs Sri Lanka, 3rd ODI: Visakhapatnam holds a special memory in Dhoni's love life, here's how
The Indian cricket team is playing the third match of the one-day series against Sri Lanka at Dr. Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium, Visakhapatnam on 17 December.. Both teams are on equal stage by winning each match of the series, so the third match is expected to be very exciting.
But on other side, Visakhapatnam has a lot of memories associated with the former Indian cricket team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni. He had a very special connection with Visakhapatnam, on this ground he played a memorable innings against Pakistan.
In 2004, Dhoni joined the Indian team. His performance in domestic cricket was fantastic, after which he was given a chance in the Indian cricket team. However, Dhoni's international career was not as good at the start. In his first match against Bangladesh played on December 23, 2004, Dhoni was run out without opening his account. Due to lack of coordination with Mohammad Kaif, he had to lose his wicket early. After being out for zero in his debut match, Dhoni was quite disappointed and in the next two matches he turned out to be a flop batsman. In the second match, he remained flop and scored 12 runs in 16 balls. In the third match he did not get enough chance to bat and remained unbeaten on 7 runs.
Also Read: India vs Sri Lanka, 3rd ODI: Rohit Sharma wins toss, elect to field
After Bangladesh, India had a match against Pakistan on home turf. In the first match played in Kochi, Dhoni once again did not get runs from his bat and he was dismissed after scoring just 3 runs. Although the Indian team won this match by 87 runs. The second match was scheduled to be played in Visakhapatnam and Dhoni was scared to get out of the team as he did not perform well for the last several matches. In the film MS Dhoni-The Untold Story which is a biopic on Dhoni, it was shown that during his visit to Visakhapatnam he had met with his girlfriend Priyanka Jha on the flight. However, after this incident, Dhoni's fate changed and he made an explosive century against arch-rival Pakistan. Indeed, in that match, Indian team captain Sourav Ganguly sent Dhoni to bat at number three and his decision proved to be a master stroke.
Earlier, while batting first, the Indian team got a big blow on the score of 26 as former batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar lost his wicket after scoring just two runs. Dhoni who was promoted to third place at that point of time started exploding runs on the field. He shared a 96-run partnership with former Indian batsman Virender Sehwag for the second wicket. Sehwag smashed 74 runs off 40 balls in this match. After Sehwag was dismissed, Dhoni remained on the wicket and scored his first century of international cricket. He played a superb innings of 148 off 123 balls with the help of 15 fours and 4 sixes. Because of this, the Indian team scored a huge score of 356 runs and the Indian team won the match by 58 runs.
