'I am going to announce my retirement' - MS Dhoni after scoring his maiden Test century
Former Indian cricketer VVS Laxman has narrated a hilarious incident when MS Dhoni shouted in the dressing room that he would be announcing his retirement after having scored his maiden Test century against Pakistan at Faisalabad in 2006.
VVS Laxman recollected a couple of memorable moments from the times he played with MS Dhoni, during an interaction on the Star Sports' show Cricket Connected.
The wristy middle-order batsman first talked about MS Dhoni's match-saving century against Pakistan at Faisalabad in January 2006.
"Two instances of MS Dhoni that I will never ever forget. The first one was when he got his first Test hundred against Pakistan at Faisalabad."
VVS Laxman recalled the Indian wicket-keeper-batsman coming into the dressing room after scoring the ton and shouting that he was going to call it quits as scoring a Test century was beyond his wildest dreams.
"I still remember him coming back into the dressing room, raising his arms and loudly saying that - 'I am going to announce my retirement. MS Dhoni has scored a hundred in Test match cricket. This is enough. I don't want anything more from Test match cricket'."
VVS Laxman's other memorable moment with MS Dhoni
The other incident VVS Laxman remembered was when India was playing a Test match against Australia at Nagpur, with MS Dhoni having recently taken over the Indian captaincy from Anil Kumble.
"The second time was when we played the Test match against Australia at Nagpur. He was the captain of the Indian team because Anil had announced his retirement two matches before that in Delhi."
Laxman narrated how the Indian captain had driven the team bus back to the hotel from the ground, which had left the whole team absolutely astonished.
"MS Dhoni suddenly asked the team bus driver to just go and sit behind and he drove the bus from the ground to the hotel in Nagpur. We all were awestruck, the captain of the Indian team driving the team bus."
MS Dhoni had played a 148-run knock in the Faisalabad Test against Pakistan, his maiden Test century, and stitched together a 210-run partnership with Irfan Pathan when India were in trouble after having been reduced to a score of 281/5 in response to Pakistan's massive first-innings score of 588 runs.
The knock had frustrated Shoaib Akhtar so much that he even resorted to delivering an intentional beamer at the swashbuckling Indian batsman.