KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant must have slept well after MS Dhoni’s retirement, reckons Dean Jones

After bidding farewell to international cricket, ex-India skipper MS Dhoni received numerous tributary messages and good wishes concerning his life post-retirement by the whole cricketing fraternity.

The departure of MSD from the limited-overs setup also raised a new debate regarding who will now fill his shoes in white-ball cricket as few contenders are waiting in the line. Fans picked their favourites and predicted them as the right replacement of the Ranchi-born wicketkeeper.

Former Australian cricketer, Dean Jones, also expressed his views on the red-hot topic but in a slightly different way. The cricketer-turned-commentator reckoned that India’s KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant must have breathed a sigh of relief after Dhoni’s international retirement.

Dhoni had taken a break from the captivating game after featuring in the World Cup 2019 semi-final contest against New Zealand in England. Apparently, that match turned out to be his last international game as well.

Nevertheless, after Dhoni’s discontinuation from the white-ball format, and Wriddhiman Saha’s injury, Pant was initially chosen as India’s sole wicketkeeping option across the three formats. However, Pant’s poor show with the willow invited a lot of criticism as he was directly compared with Dhoni.

Kerala star Sanju Samson was also called as a back-up option, but he didn’t get enough chances, and the management continued with Pant as their primary choice. In January early this year, Pant got injured in a game against Australia and Rahul substituted him as a keeper for the match. Later, Rahul fulfilled wicketkeeping duties for the remaining series as well.

Due to Rahul’s impressive skills behind the wickets, captain Virat Kohli backed the Karnataka stalwart as their first-choice keeper in limited-overs cricket.

Many experts of the game even said that whenever Dhoni would return to the Indian team, he would be given the responsibility of keeping. But now that he has announced his retirement, Jones is of the opinion that the biggest competitor of both Pant and Rahul has left the bullring.

“After MS Dhoni retirement yesterday… I bet you KL Rahul and R Pant slept well last night!!” Jones wrote on the micro-blogging website.