Indian opener Gautam Gambhir expressed his honest comments on the future of former Indian skipper MS Dhoni. Gambhir has himself lost his opening slot to the youngsters like KL Rahul.

Despite having an utterly memorable past, Dhoni has been receiving a lot of criticism in recent times for underperforming. Recently, even Indian chief selector MSK Prasad said that Dhoni isn’t an automatic selection in the squad.

However, Gambhir also has some similar opinions to Prasad regarding Dhoni as he said that the latter can only survive in the Indian squad till 2019 World Cup only and only if he keeps giving regular performances. Gautam said, “The only way he can survive till 2019 World Cup is by keep on performing. That should be the criteria for everyone, irrespective of whether he is Dhoni or someone else.”

The southpaw also reckons that past performances of any players shouldn’t be taking into consideration during team selection. It was a clear hint that Dhoni’s previous performances in big tournaments shouldn’t be considered for his selection. He said, “Okay, you have done something in the past but that’s passed. You can keep playing till you want to. At the same time I believe someone like Dinesh Karthik has been a massive loss for us because whenever he got an opportunity, he did well. He could have been your backup wicket-keeping option as well.”

Gambhir played his last international match under Virat Kohli’s leadership in 2016 as a Test opener during England’s tour of India. Since then, Gautam has found it difficult to make a comeback into the Indian squad and it seems that he has shifted his focus more towards domestic cricket and the Indian Premier League(IPL).