• Source:JND
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Former Indian all-rounder Irfan Pathan had a promising start to his international career, but his career didn't go as planned, and he suddenly vanished from the national team setup.

Despite picking up a five-wicket haul in 2012, Pathan was left out of the team, and the match turned out to be his final ODI match. While the exact reasons behind Irfan's exile from the Indian team are unknown, the then-skipper, MS Dhoni, is also blamed for the poor handling of the all-rounder's situation.

Way back in 2020, Irfan himself opened up on some candid conversations he had with Dhoni about his role in the team. A clip from an old interview from five years ago has gone viral on social media.

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In the interview with SportsTak, Irfan revealed that he had a chat with Dhoni in 2008 about his performances, after hearing in the media that the skipper wasn't impressed with his bowling. When asked by Irfan, however, Dhoni said that there was no such issue with his performance.

"Yes, I asked him. During the 2008 Australia series, Mahi bhai's statement came out in the media that Irfan wasn't bowling well. So I thought I had bowled well throughout the series, so I went and asked Mahi bhai about this. Sometimes, the statements are twisted in the media, so I also wanted to clarify. So Mahi bhai said, 'No, Irfan, there is nothing like this, everything's going as per plans.' When you get a reply like this, then you believe that, okay, you do what you can. Also, if you keep asking for explanations again and again after that, you hurt your self-respect," he said in the interview.

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The 40-year-old Pathan then seemingly took a swipe at Dhoni, saying that he isn't someone who sets up a hookah in someone's room to please him. "I don’t have a habit of setting up a hookah in someone’s room or talking about this. Everyone knows. Sometimes, if you don’t speak about it, it’s better. A cricketer’s job is to perform on the field, and that is what I used to focus on," Irfan said.

Recently, Pathan had opened up on the circumstances that led to his departure from the national team. He revealed the reasoning he was given about being dropped, and how MS Dhoni – the Indian captain at the time – took the call to sideline the pacer.

"It was back in 2009, when we were in New Zealand. Before that, my brother (Yusuf Pathan) and I had won matches in Sri Lanka. The situation in which we had pulled a win – if it had been anyone else in our place, they wouldn’t have been dropped for a year. In that match against Sri Lanka, we needed 60 runs from just 27–28 balls, and we won it from there," Irfan began as he narrated the story during a chat with TheLallantop.