“We were part of a beautiful journey together.I clearly remember that Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and I scored 100 centuries in 5 years,” Dhawan told The Hindustan Times. “Ravi (Shastri) bhai was our coach then.”Hundreds scored by Kohli, Rohit and Shikhar across formats between June 1, 2013, and June 30, 2019:
BATSMAN | INNINGS | 100s | TESTS | ODIs | T20Is |
Virat Kohli | 274 | 49 | 21 | 28 | 0 |
Rohit Sharma | 228 | 30 | 3 | 23 | 4 |
Shikhar Dhawan | 29 | 23 | 6 | 17 | 0 |
Dhawan, who announced his decision to retire via a video post on social media, went on to thank all those who made a difference in her career.
“So many coaches have played a part in my career. Duncan Fletcher, Sanjay Bangar, Vikram Rathour, Rahul Dravid, Ravi Shastri. Then all the fielding coaches, batting coaches. I am thankful to all of them who worked on me.
“Even the NCA (National Cricket Academy) has played such a huge role, understood how training and rehab is done whenever I got injured. And a big thank you to the BCCI as well,” Dhawan added.
However, Dhawan’s career started to wane after the 2019 World Cup and it coincided with the rise of opening batsmen like Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal.
A TIMELINE OF DHAWAN’S CAREER FROM 2010 TO 2019
– Recorded a second-ball duck on ODI debut against Australia at Visakhapatnam on October 20, 2010. Dropped and missed the next 19 matches, including the 2011 World Cup.
– Played against the West Indies in the Caribbean in 2011, scoring 51, 3, 4 and 11. He was dropped subsequently and missed the next 39 matches in succession.
– Returned to the team after two years and played in the 2013 ICC Champions Trophy.
– Missed 8 successive matches in 2016-17 — three against Zimbabwe in Zimbabwe and five against New Zealand
– Missed six matches in succession in 2017-18.
– Got injured (left thumb) while scoring a hundred against Australia at The Oval in the 2019 World Cup. He did not come out to field and was ruled out for the rest of the tournament
– Missed three consecutive ODIs against West Indies in 2019-20.
Dhawan played 34 Tests, scoring 2315 runs at an average of 40.61, including 7 hundreds and 5 fifties. In white-ball internationals, the southpaw played 167 ODIs and 68 T20Is, scoring 6793 and 1759 runs respectively. He averaged 44.11 in ODIs and 27.92 in T20Is.
Dhawan’s tally of centuries in limited-overs internationals totalled 17 — all in ODIs. Besides that, he scored 39 ODI fifties and 5 in T20Is.
(Stats courtesy: Rajesh Kumar)