Peak Shikhar Dhawan in Indian colours, you just had to be there

Eighteen months ago, when it became evident that Shikhar Dhawan will never don the Indian shirt again, my colleague Hardik Worah wrote this brilliant piece about how the streets will never forget Dha-one.

I have to warn everyone in advance that this is going to be a piece more or less along the same lines. 

Dhawan was the ultimate ‘you just had to be there’ cricketer who had the vibiest career of all time, which was filled with nothing but good memories and great moments. 

269 international appearances in total, of which 219 came in a seven-year period from the start of 2013 to the end of 2019. And boy, in the relatively short window, Dhawan made sure everyone ate good. 

He barged into international cricket, gave the entire world tonnes of memories and quietly left without elaborating. All the while sporting a gigantic smile.

The ultimate people’s champ. 

When Andy Murray retired from professional Tennis earlier this month, it was sort of sad to realise how many people, for a long while, had forgotten about the ‘Big 4’ era in Tennis due to the extended dominance of the ‘Big 3’. 

Before the Big 3 — Federer, Djokovic and Nadal — there was the Big 4, and Murray was as much responsible as the other three for Tennis peaking like no other sport this century, for a four-year period between 2008 and 2012.

Now, Dhawan is no first ballot Hall of Famer like Andy Murray is, but the longevity and the extended dominance of Indian cricket’s Big 2, Kohli and Rohit, should not make the world forget how there absolutely was a Big 3 in Indian cricket, a decade ago in ODIs, with Dhawan playing his part in turning the Men in Blue into the most dominant ODI side in the 2010s. 

From the start of the Champions Trophy 2013 — Dhawan’s comeback in ODIs — till the end of 2019, team India won 67% of the matches they played, emerging victorious in 106 of the 164 games they played during this period.

A World Cup eluded them, sure, but in this period, they:

> Won a Champions Trophy

> Won 5-1 away in South Africa

> Won away series in Australia, England and New Zealand

> Won the Asia Cup

The Men in Blue’s dominance in the 50-over format was off the charts, and Dhawan was one of the three linchpins that enabled this dominance, amassing a whopping 5,449 runs during this period at an average of 45.79, smashing SEVENTEEN HUNDREDS.

Dhawan was no Kohli or Rohit, but he was arguably the third-best ODI batter in the entire world during this period due to how consistently he impacted matches and, of course, stepped up during the big occasions. 

The 38-year-old’s incredible record in ICC events has rightly garnered the attention it deserves, but something that’s really been unappreciated and, to an extent, gone unnoticed is the massive role the left-hander played in enabling his opening partner Rohit to rack up runs like a beast.

Rohit, the ODI batter in 2024, is a powerplay basher that throws the kitchen sink at everything (let’s call this version of his Rohit 3.0), but the Rohit of 2013-2019 (Rohit 2.0), the Rohit that opened the batting with Dhawan, was an individual that bided his time, started extremely slow and then switched gears seamlessly. 

During the same aforementioned period (June 2013 to December 2019), Rohit struck at 70.9 in the powerplay (overs 1-10), rarely getting off to fliers.

However, he never felt pressure to shy away from playing this way because of what was happening at the other end. 

Dhawan, in contrast, struck at 86.4 in the first 10 overs, ensuring the team never suffered or fell behind due to Rohit’s tendency to start watchfully. And he did so while remarkably averaging more against the new ball than his opening partner. 

Things like these will likely be forgotten down the line, but ask Rohit, and he’ll be the first to admit that he owes his success in ODIs a lot to his opening partner Dhawan, who proved to be the perfect foil to everything he did.

Where Dhawan ranks among India’s greatest openers in ODIs is a detailed discussion for another day, but you’ll have to admit there is a solid argument for him being greater than Virender Sehwag and at the same level as Sourav Ganguly, if not higher.

Understandably, we’ve gotten caught up in discussing Dhawan’s ODI career because, after all, 50-over cricket was his best format. But for someone exclusively remembered for his ODI exploits, Dhawan had a fantastic Test career.

An average of 40.61, a strike rate of 66.94 with seven hundreds. One of those hundreds was a record-breaking ton on debut. Without exaggerating, most professional cricketers would kill to have a career like this at the Test level. 

Dhawan, the Test batter, had his flaws. His SENA average of 25.80 — averaging under 30 in every country barring New Zealand — should tell you that he was never an elite opener who was well-rounded.

But he was still a force to be reckoned with in the right conditions, and you have to say that when you look at his overall numbers, he sort of did max out his potential. 

The same cannot be said, however, for Dhawan’s T20I career, which was a disappointment. 

The left-hander had lots of great moments in ODIs and some exceptional moments in Tests. But his T20I career was more or less forgettable, and his overall numbers — 27.92 average and 126.36 strike rate — fairly sum up his T20I career: middling.

In T20Is, he was also never the ICC Tournament beast that he was in ODIs: Dhawan averaged just 10.57 in T20WCs and did not even make the squad for the 2021 T20WC, five years after getting dropped midway through the home T20WC in 2016.

Despite being an aggressive batter by nature, Dhawan, in T20Is, didn’t even hit half the heights he did in both ODIs and Tests.

***

All said and done, though, this is a man who is retiring in absolute peace without any regrets, knowing he did everything he could while giving everything he had. 

After a record-breaking U19 World Cup showing in 2004, where he became the first and only batter to breach the 500-run barrier in the competition (a record that went on to stand for 19 more years), there might have been a time in the late 2000s when Dhawan might have wondered if he would ever play for India.

To go from that to having one of the finest international careers ever is nothing short of remarkable.

The streets will never forget Shikhar Dhawan, indeed. 

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