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Irfan Pathan has said he was dropped from ODIs by MS Dhoni in 2009 despite coming off match-winning performances.
Irfran Pathan has said MS Dhoni dropped him in 2009. (PC: X, File)
Former India all-rounder Irfan Pathan has revealed the story of being dropped from ODIs by his captain, MS Dhoni, in 2009. Irfan, though not questioning Dhoni’s call, claimed that he was a match-winner at the time and was coming off performances that made him all but undroppable. He said that the head coach, Gary Kirsten, didn’t name Dhoni either, and just told him that the decision to not play the all-rounder was out of his hands.
The revelation comes only a day after Virender Sehwag was quoted telling the tale of his dropping in 2008, again led by Dhoni. In Sehwag’s case, Sachin Tendulkar intervened to stop him from retiring, and the opener took only a few months to make a comeback. However, Irfan spent the next two years out of the team and by the time he was called back in 2011, the team had started moving on to younger bowlers.
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“My brother (Yusuf Pathan) and I had won matches in Sri Lanka. The situation in which we had pulled a win – if it had been anyone else in our place, they wouldn’t have been dropped for a year. In that match against Sri Lanka, we needed 60 runs from just 27–28 balls, and we won it from there,” Pathan said in an interview with TheLallantop.
“In New Zealand, I was benched for the first match, the second match, and the third match as well. The fourth match was a draw because of rain. I wasn’t in the final match either. Then I asked Gary sir why I had been dropped. If there was something I needed to improve, he could tell me, but I wanted to know the reason I was left out.”
“Kirsten gave me two reasons. He said, ‘There are things that are not in my hand.’ Those were Gary’s exact words. I asked whose hands it was in, but he didn’t tell me. I already knew whose hands it was in. The playing XI is decided by the captain’s choice. The decision rests with the captain, coach, and management. Dhoni was the captain at that time. I won’t get into whether that decision was right or wrong, because every captain has the right to run the team in his own way,” Pathan added.
The all-rounder also rued how, at that time, all-rounders weren’t as valuable as in the modern era.
“The second answer was that they were looking for a batting all-rounder at No. 7. Fair enough — my brother was a batting all-rounder, while I was a bowling all-rounder. The two were different from each other, but there was only room for one in the team. Nowadays, if you ask whether two all-rounders are needed, people would gladly take both.”
Irfan eventually ended with 120 ODIs where he took 173 wickets and scored over 1500 runs.
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