Shikhar Dhawan opens up about IPL, international retirement

Batter Shikhar Dhawan announced his Indian Premier League (IPL) and international retirement, brining curtains on a brilliant career, where he had plenty of highs. He played for India as recently as 2022, but then he fell out of contention, with Shubman Gill cementing his place as an opener in the white-ball format.

The 38-year-old from Delhi, who is one of the leading run-getters in the IPL, said that he retired because he had no inspiration to play domestic cricket anymore. "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," Dhawan told PTI.

"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]," he added.

As a result, the southpaw felt that he would not have enough practice going into the T20 tournament and that's when he made the call to call it quits. "I thought that, 'right, I've played enough, and I need to give it a break because I'm not playing that much cricket, so you lose touch as well," Dhawan said, opening up about his big decision.

"I thought that continuing IPL and just coming up with two, three months of hard work won't be enough for me to go and play."

Dhawan, who averages 65.15 at the ICC events also lavished praise on his former opening partner and current captain Rohit Sharma. The duo put on over 5,000 runs in ODIs, including 18 centuries and 15 half-century stands.

"He's a great captain, and so happy that he led the team and won the World Cup for our nation. We were waiting for that World Cup for a long time. We were very close in [winning] the ODI World Cup as well, and now we achieved that goal in T20Is," Dhawan said.

"He's a very experienced captain, and I'm sure all the boys love him as a leader and he has done a phenomenal job for the Indian team."

Dhawan is currently part of the Legends League Cricket (LLC), where he has slammed 21 (20) and 52 (48) for Gujarat Greats in the two matches so far.

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