Chilled out Dhoni shakes a leg with Rahane
MUMBAI: MS Dhoni appears to be enjoying spending time with teammates in the first few days of the IPL. He uploaded a short video on his Instagram profile on Monday to let his fans know that everything was upbeat in the Rising Pune Supergiant (RPS) camp, despite a shaky start to their season.
The video has Dhoni dancing alongside teammate Ajinkya Rahane with the IPL’s highest paid foreign player Ben Stokes watching in the background.
The video, which was made using the video loop software Boomerang, has garnered over 7,50,000 views and 4,400 comments within the first 12 hours of being posted. The Pune franchise has had a mixed start to their season, winning their opening match against Mumbai Indians by seven wickets and then losing to Kings XI Punjab by six wickets.
YET TO FIRE
Dhoni has not managed to get going with the bat, managing 12 runs in the win in Pune while getting dismissed for just five in the defeat to Kings XI.
His performance was the topic of discussion on Twitter as Harsh Goenka — brother of RPS owner Sanjiv Goenka — tweeted that Steve Smith was starring in the role of captain, the responsibility of which was taken away from Dhoni before the start of the season.
“#RPSvMI Smith proves who’s the king of the jungle. Overshadows Dhoni totally. Captains innings. Great move to appoint him as captain (sic),” Harsh Goenka had tweeted during the RPS opening match against Mumbai Indians on April 6.
Smith had struck an unbeaten 84 off 54 balls to see the Pune franchise to victory.
After receiving severe criticism from Dhoni’s supporters on Twitter, Harsh deleted the tweet.
This is the first season Dhoni is playing in the IPL when he is not captaining his team. He captained Chennai Super Kings (CSK) from 2008 to 2015, and then did the same for RPS in 2016 after the Chennai franchise was suspended.