Patil recalled that he, alongwith fellow selector Rajinder Singh Hans, met Sachin on the fourth day of the Nagpur Test against England that year and asked him about his future plans.
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Honest and forever candid with his views, Patil was bound to dodge direct questions on Dhoni’s future as captain of India’s limited-overs sides but having finished his term, the former middle-order batsman said his committee had indeed discussed removing Dhoni as captain of the ODI and T20I teams, especially after his shock retirement from Test cricket at the end of 2014, in the middle of a series against Australia. The maestro chose to call it quits, first in the ODI format in December 2012, and then retired from Test in November the following year. But that opportunity didn’t come to the selectors. It was a good thing to do. He retired in 2013 from Tests after more than two decades of glorious service. “There are some matters between the selectors and BCCI which should remain confidential and can not be revealed”, Patil said.
While Tendulkar was a regular member of the Test squad, he wasn’t playing in the 50-over format regularly. So, it was decided that he would retire from One-day cricket.
India had already lost the series 2-0 with one Test remaining, but Patil insisted that the Indian team wasn’t a sinking ship when Dhoni chose to quit. “We didn’t have enough time to experiment”, he said about the decision.
Incidentally, just before the home series against Pakistan in the month of December 2012, Tendulkar, just one short of his 50th ODI ton, chose to retire from the shorter format of the game and broke a million hearts.
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The other big retirement Patil’s panel had to deal with was even more high-profile: the retirement of Sachin Tendulkar. Keeping in mind the World Cup, we chose to go with Dhoni. So when we spoke – and it was quite an open discussion – he decided that he will retire from one-day cricket and, in front of me, he called Sanjay Jagdale, who was the [BCCI] secretary then. But Patil said that he wasn’t in favour of dishing out on-field farewells to cricketers. The Champions Trophy is a year away and before you know it, the 2019 World Cup would be upon the world.The new selectors are inexperienced and might feel the heat if they had to take a call on Dhoni. “Dhoni never opposed their selection”, said Patil. The former selector, however, dismissed allegations of players being dropped due to their age. And this decision is not the player’s, it’s the BCCI’s. In addition to Tendulkar, both Virender Sehwag and Zaheer Khan also called it a day. I can understand how it feels, because I too have come through that phase. The farewell that Sachin got, that was different. But it didn’t happen, and they felt unhappy, became annoyed. “Maybe”, he said. “Because, prior to the next selection committee meeting, he called the then BCCI secretary Sanjay Jagdale and myself to tell us that he has made a decision to retire from ODIs. But we don’t place much importance on these things”.
