Kolkata: Former Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni played a gem of a knock of 127 runs off 109 balls that helped his state team Jharkhand to seal their first victory in Vijay Hazare Trophy on Sunday. But Dhoni’s happiness and satisfaction after winning the match became even more special when he saw his friends from Kharagpur where his cricketing career had started. Dhoni’s eleven comrades came to Eden Gardens on Sunday to give him a special surprise. Dhoni’s former Ranji team-mate Satyaprakash Krishna, Chairman of Kharagpur Corporation Pradip Sarkar, Robin Kumar, Anand Kumar, Ramu Kumar, Thomas, Aniket Das were among the eleven friends who came to meet Dhoni at The Eden Gardens. Earlier as well, in many occasions when Dhoni became a celebrity, these friends met him in various times but Dhoni used to gel with them as just another friend like he was before when he used to work as a ticket collector of South Eastern Railway.
While going out from the stadium, Dhoni found his friend Thomas just outside the dressing room. He has a tea stall at Kharagpur and its connection with the former Indian captain has always been special. Dhoni saw him and hugged him immediately and then invited him to come to the hotel, as he said, “I will serve you a grand dinner.” After Dhoni’s departure, Thomas became absolutely speechless, “When Dhoni bhai was in Kharagpur, he used to visit my shop two or three times a day to have tea. Many times I served him hot milk in that period. After today’s incident, I will go back to Kharagpur and name my shop ‘Dhoni Tea Stall’,” Thomas said.
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Among these friends, Satyaprakash Krishna was the closest to Dhoni. He is five years senior to Dhoni and has always treated Dhoni as his younger brother. When Dhoni had no job, it was Satyaprakash who spoke to the DRM of Kharagpur Mr. A K Ganguly to provide Dhoni a job in Kharagpur Railways as a junior TT, where he got a monthly stipend of 5,000 rupees and the rest was history. Satyaprakash was reliving his old mamories where they had a very limited facilities to live with, ”We had limited resources to live with at Kharagpur. We used to play a few tennis ball cricket tournaments and four or five Ranji matches in a season for Bihar. It was Dhoni’s God-gifted ability and his performance which helped him to be a part of the Indian National Team by playing only those few matches.” Said Satyaprakash.
Satyaprakash was remembering the incident of 2003 World Cup Final between India and Australia, ”In 2003 World Cup final when India was chasing the huge 360 runs, we were watching the game after returning from our office. From the first delivery, Dhoni was saying that India can only reach the score if Sachin remains on the crease till the end. He respects Sachin like a God. When Sachin got out to McGrath, Dhoni straight went to the kitchen to make some tea. He didn’t watch the match after that.”
After the Vijay Hazare game against Chhattisgarh, Dhoni called all his eleven friends at the dressing room and then invited all of them at the Team Hotel for the dinner. The friends got surprised to see such gesture from the former India Captain, who hasn’t got changed even after the pinnacle of success and fame across the globe. The most successful skipper in the history of Indian cricket proved it yet again that, he still lives in that root which made him the champion he is in world cricket.