Sydney: Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni finally broke his silence over the IPL spot-fixing scandal on Sunday, saying that he does not expect the speculation around his name to stop anytime soon despite nothing concrete coming up against him.
Dhoni, who captains Chennai Super Kings in the Indian Premier League, has been remarkably calm in the last couple of years despite his name regularly cropping up in cases pertaining to conflict of interest.
There was wild speculation about his name being among the yet-to-be-released list of 13 players, who have been indicted by the Justice Mukul Mudgal Committee in the IPL spot-fixing and betting scandal.
“I know one thing, irrespective of what is there, when it comes to Indian cricket, my name keeps popping up. Now that this has been settled, something new will pop up. It keeps popping up. I am quite used to it,” Dhoni said ahead of the tri-series match against Australia on Monday.
“If there is nothing, some speculative story comes up, big or small. I have to keep dealing with all these things. It is the end of one story, something else may start in a couple of days’ time,” Dhoni said.
Delivering its long-awaited verdict, the Supreme Court barred BCCI President-in-exile N Srinivasan from contesting the Board’s Presidential elections.
The Court also declared that the allegation of betting against Gurunath Meiyappan, a CSK team official and son-in-law of Srinivasan, and Rajasthan Royals co-owner Raj Kundra stands proved while the charge of cover up against Srinivasan was “not proved”.
Speaking about the tri-series match at hand, Dhoni said unfit players will not be risked in the ongoing ODI tri-series keeping in mind next month’s World Cup here.
India are staring at an early exit from the tri-series against England and Australia after successive losses. “In the last two matches, we were playing the best XI possible. But we were also bothered by injuries,” said Dhoni in the pre-match press conference.
“Experimentation is a word that’s banned in the Indian team’s context since a long time. We try to feature the best eleven and at the same time, we like to get a lot of positives out of the game.”
“At the same time, what’s the point looking to win games where you are pushing an individual who has quite a significant niggle. You may end up winning the game but you may end up losing him for the World Cup. You have to take a call. So close to the World Cup, there is no time for errors when it comes to actually managing the players because we want the fifteen to be part of the World Cup squad,” he added.
Rohit Sharma has been ruled out of Monday’s game as he is still recovering from his hamstring injury. Ishant Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja are available though the latter’s selection is still under some doubt owing to his restricted fielding ability.
