MS Dhoni's Legacy in Indian Cricket: Raina's Journey and Exit

MS Dhoni’s shadow still stretches across Indian cricket like a giant sundial. Nine years since he handed the captaincy over, six since he walked away from international cricket, his era still frames every conversation about what came next – and who got left behind.

Under Dhoni, India ticked off every box that had mocked them for years. T20 World Cup. Champions Trophy. No. 1 in Test rankings for the first time. A 50-over World Cup after 28 long years. That 2011 night in Mumbai still stands as the last time India lifted the ODI World Cup.

The Dhoni years were ruthless and romantic at once. Senior stars, no matter how big, discovered there was no such thing as a guaranteed place. The new generation arrived with a thud. Virat Kohli grew from precocious talent to inevitable heir. Rohit Sharma reinvented himself at the top of the order. Yuvraj Singh, between 2007 and 2011, played cricket from another planet. Suresh Raina turned No. 7 into a launchpad, winning games with those whiplash cameos. Shikhar Dhawan walked into Test cricket with the highest score by an Indian opener on debut.

That churn, that cold-blooded clarity, did not end with Dhoni. It only changed hands.

Kohli’s hard edge, and a door that quietly closed

When Dhoni stepped aside and Kohli took full control, Indian cricket entered a different kind of regime. The indulgence vanished. “Manageable” performances no longer passed. Kohli had a World Cup in his sights and a clear picture of what his team should look like.

Yo-Yo tests became non-negotiable. Fitness was a filter as much as form. Those who lagged, however decorated, slipped out of the frame. Names that had been part of the dressing room furniture at the start of 2017 were gone by the time India landed in England for the 2019 World Cup.

Raina was one of those names.

By then, India looked almost unrecognisable. KL Rahul had become the steady middle-order option. Ravindra Jadeja and Hardik Pandya locked in the all-rounder roles. No. 4 remained the old puzzle in a new era, with Ambati Rayudu and then Vijay Shankar floated as answers. Raina, once the heartbeat of the middle order, was no longer in the conversation.

In an interview with Aakash Chopra, Raina recently laid bare how it all ended for him. The timing was brutal. On August 15, 2020, just hours after Dhoni announced his retirement with that understated “R” bomb, Raina followed. Only 33, but already certain he was not in India’s plans. Conversations with Kohli and former coaches Anil Kumble and Ravi Shastri had confirmed it.

“Every captain has his own team”

“See, every captain has his own team. He obviously feels someone else is better,” Raina said, explaining his exit.

“Yuvraj Singh and I failed the Yo-Yo test, but we cleared it. We played a lot of domestic too. Scored a lot of runs. I did speak to Anil bhai (then the coach), and he told me there were certain things I needed to do. I was named Player of the Tournament in South Africa in T20Is. But in the 2019 World Cup, a different batter was preferred for England. A different keeper went there too. Back then, I felt that I could have done better.”

Then came the sting.

“Players expect respect. The communication could have been better, such as what are the selectors thinking? What message is being given to them by them? But that’s not in our control. I asked plenty of questions, but didn’t get any answers. I spoke to both the captain and the coaches. But they did what they felt was right.”

There is frustration in those words, but the numbers tell their own story.

The decline behind the emotion

Up to the 2015 World Cup, Raina looked like a permanent fixture. He finished games, fielded like a man possessed, and gave India a handy spin option. After that tournament, the slide began.

His long-standing weakness against quality short-pitched bowling, especially on quick surfaces, became harder to hide. Injuries cut into his rhythm. From 2016 onwards, his ODI career all but vanished: just three matches in that format. T20Is gave him a longer rope – 32 appearances – but the returns were modest. Across 22 innings he scored 622 runs, averaging 25 with a strike-rate of 135 and only two fifties.

Even his recollection of that South Africa T20I series does not quite match the record. Raina insists he was Player of the Tournament. The award actually went to Bhuvneshwar Kumar for his seven wickets. Raina did shine in the third T20I, earning Player of the Match for his 43 off 27 and figures of 1/27. Yet those games, followed by the limited-overs tour of England a few months later, turned out to be his last appearances in an India shirt.

From there, the comeback route ran through domestic cricket. Raina says he piled on runs. The scorecards offer a cooler verdict.

Domestic grind, but not enough

In 2017, across the Duleep Trophy and Ranji Trophy, Raina managed 243 runs in 13 innings. One fifty. An average of 18.69. For a player trying to batter down the national door, that simply did not move the needle.

He did respond. In 2018, his numbers improved significantly: 769 runs in 24 innings across the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, Vijay Hazare Trophy, Deodhar Trophy and Ranji Trophy. An average of 36.62, with one century and seven half-centuries. Respectable, at times impressive.

The Vijay Hazare Trophy stood out. Raina scored 208 runs in six innings there, averaging 41.60 with three fifties. For most domestic pros, that would mark a strong season. For someone fighting to reclaim a place in a stacked India middle order, it still fell short of irresistible.

The national side had moved on, powered by younger legs and sharper numbers. The selectors had options. Plenty of them.

A career of firsts, and an ending that came too soon

Strip away the late-career disappointment and Raina’s body of work still stands tall. He walked into a dressing room in turmoil during the Rahul Dravid–Greg Chappell years and carved out a permanent space in the middle order. He became the first Indian batter to score centuries in all three formats. He played a crucial role in the 2011 World Cup triumph, especially in the knockouts, and set a benchmark for Indian fielding that inspired a generation.

For a long stretch, he was the symbol of India’s white-ball aggression – busy at the crease, fearless against spin, electric in the ring.

Yet the same system that once rewarded his fearlessness eventually pushed him out as the team sought more pace with the ball, more height at the crease, more adaptability against short stuff, more all-round skill. The game sped up. The margins tightened. Raina, whose career once seemed destined for even greater heights, found himself on the wrong side of that evolution.

In the end, his story sits at the fault line between two eras – Dhoni’s loyal, battle-hardened core and Kohli’s unforgiving, fitness-driven machine. Indian cricket surged ahead. Raina stepped away. And the question lingers: in a team that demands constant reinvention, how many other careers will be cut short just as they seem ready for a second act?