MS Dhoni turns interviewer into interviewee

If you’re at a post-Indian-cricket-match press-conference, expect to entertained—for as long as MS Dhoni remains the captain of the Indian cricket team. After India’s semi-final loss to the West Indies in the World T20 tournament, the Indian skipper almost embarrassed an Australian sports journalist Sam Ferris when the latter asked Dhoni about retirement. 

The visibly light-headed captain invited Ferris to the table for a little tete-e-tete and shot a set of harmless questions right back at him just as his fans would have liked it.

“Let’s have some fun, please come here,” Dhoni invited the journalist as he drew a chair closer to his. Cautious Indian journalists would have sniffed trouble at this point. “Come on, come on,” insisted the captain to a hesitant Ferris.

Ferris did finally join Dhoni before the media cameras.

Unsure of what to expect, Ferris greeted him, “Hello sir!”

“Do you want me to retire?” fired the captain.

The poor chap realized that he had an incoming hot potato. “Ah! No, that’s what I was going to ask,” he replied.

“Do you think I’m unfit, looking at me running,” Dhoni pulled the trigger once again after he added that he had, in fact, expected the question from an Indian journalist .

“No. Very fast,” said Ferris appreciatively.

“Do you think I can survive until the 2019 World Cup?” asked Dhoni. 

Ferris obviously had no choice but to concede. “Umm . . . yes! Sure!” he answered.

“Then you have answered the question. Thank you,” signed off Dhoni with a grin on his face suggesting that it was all in jest. 

Just as a shaken Ferris left the table, Dhoni called him back to return his mic. 

Dhoni displaying ‘chutzpah’ added, “I wish it was an Indian media person. Then I would have asked if he has a son who is a wicketkeeper and ready to play. He would have said no, then I would have said maybe a brother who is a wicket-keeper and who is ready to play.

You fired the wrong ammunition at the wrong time.”

However, later in an article, Ferris revealed why he’d asked Dhoni the question.

“I thought it was a pretty standard question to be fair. When Dhoni shocked the world with his Test retirement out of nowhere after the 2014 Boxing Day Test at the MCG, it caught everybody off-guard.

With that in mind, I was sure he would get asked again if he was going to retire from limited-overs cricket,” Ferris wrote.

However, Ferris also admitted that he had eyed a headline with the question that his Indian counterparts had failed to ask.

“I even prefaced it (the question) with “You’ve achieved pretty much everything in cricket” to soften the blow and try to make me not look like some blood-thirsty mosquito looking for a headline (which I most definitely was),” he wrote.

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Dhoni lashes out at journalist during post-match press conference, Video goes viral