'MS Dhoni asked me to focus more on batting on day he announced retirement' - Deepak Chahar

MS Dhoni is one of the gems of Indian cricket. He is the one responsible for making India a top-ranked unit. The likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja are players that were backed by Dhoni. It won't be an overstatement to say that Dhoni created a strong foundation for Indian cricket before retiring from the game.

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Dhoni has always backed the player he trusts on. One of the players that was backed by Dhoni is Deepak Chahar. Chahar has emerged as one of the best Indian pacers in recent times. However, he came to the limelight while playing for Chennai in the Indian T20 League under MS Dhoni, who groomed him.

Chahar recently has shown that he has the skills to be a proper all-rounder. He has played a couple of impactful knocks for India in recent times. Recently, Chahar spoke about the impact of Dhoni on his career and said it was Dhoni who spotted the batting talent in him and asked him to focus more on that aspect of the game.

“One day Mahi bhai said to me… ‘you have done a good job with the bowling but haven’t justified your batting. I think you should do that’. He told me the day he announced his retirement. We were sitting in the evening and talking. Dhoni said I should focus more on batting,” Chahar told SportsYaari on their YouTube channel.

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Chahar further reflected that he always wanted to become a batting all-rounder and is sweating it hard to furnish his skills with the bat. “I have been batting since I was young and this pursuit of being an all-rounder had started back then itself. In 2017-18, I used to bat better because I was at home and so I used to practice batting a lot. In fact, I used to focus more on batting than bowling because there was a limit on the number of balls you would bowl in one day because doing more would take a toll on your body,” he added.

Chahar is likely to miss the upcoming T20I series against Sri Lanka due to a hamstring injury.