Former India opener Shikhar Dhawan has shared that he decided to retire because he didn’t have the inspiration to go back to domestic cricket again to push for a comeback to the Indian team as well. He also explained he was only playing the Indian Premier League (IPL) over the last couple of years, which wasn’t a lot of cricket as well. Having last played for India in December 2022, Dhawan announced his retirement from across format in August 2024. The veteran also featured in 34 Tests, 167 ODIs and 68 T20Is, scoring over 10,800 runs.

Speaking to PTI on the sidelines of the Legends League Cricket,he said: “I didn’t want to play domestic cricket, which I started playing at the age of 18 or 19 and I didn’t have that inspiration from inside to play that (form of) cricket. If I look back, the last two years of my cricketing career, I wasn’t playing much of international cricket and I was playing IPL to IPL, so I wasn’t playing much of cricket (overall).”

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However, Shikhar Dhawan represented the Indian team in the 2015 and 2019 ODI World Cups and he was also the Player of the Tournament when the Indian Team won the Champions Trophy in 2013 in England. He also led the Punjab Kings (PBKS) in IPL 2024. But his tournament was cut short due to injury.

“I thought that, ‘alright, I’ve played enough, and I need to give it a break because I’m not playing that much cricket, so you lose the touch as well. I thought that continuing IPL and just coming up with two, three months of hard work won’t be enough for me to go and play. So that was the reason for me to just call it off, and yeah, I was very happy and satisfied and content with whatever I achieved in my career, and very, very grateful for everything,” Shikhar Dhawan concluded.