Didn’t Want To Play Domestic Cricket…: Shikhar Dhawan Reveals Reason Behind His Retirement

Shikhar Dhawan retired in August 2024. Photo: AP

Nearly two years after playing his last game for Team India, Shikhar Dhawan announced his retirement from international cricket. The former India opener wasn’t in contention to make his return and he decided to hand up his boots. A month after retiring from international cricket, Dhawan has revealed the reason behind it.

Speaking to PTI, Dhawan revealed that he didn’t want to play domestic cricket. The veteran batsman highlighted that he hadn’t played much cricket of late. “I didn’t want to play domestic cricket, which I started playing at the age of 18 or 19 and I didn’t have that inspiration from inside to play that (form of) cricket. If I look back, the last two years of my cricketing career, I wasn’t playing much of international cricket and I was playing IPL to IPL, so I wasn’t playing much of cricket (overall),” Dhawan told PTI.

Dhawan stayed away from domestic cricket in the 2023/24 season. He made his return to the game in IPL 2024 as the captain of Punjab Kings. He only played 5 matches in the season.

One of the biggest players in ICC events, Dhawan top-scored in the 2013 and 2017 Champions Trophy. He scored 363 runs in 2013. In 2017, he finished the tournament with 338 runs. With 412 runs, he finished as India’s highest run-scorer in the 2015 World Cup.

Dhawan, who made his India debut in 2010, played 34 Tests, 167 ODIs and 68 T20Is. He scored 2315 runs in red-ball cricket. Dhawan played his last Test in 2018.

Dhawan scored 6793 runs in ODIs. He was a regular in the ODI format for a long time. His last ODI appearance came against Bangladesh in 2022. Dhawan played his last T20I against Sri Lanka in July 2021. He was the captain of the team in that fixture. Dhawan was dropped for the 2021 T20 World Cup and he failed to make his return after that.