Dhoni's banter with journalist misses the point

MS Dhoni's unusual interaction with an Australian journalist broaching the retirement question prompted amused laughter from the rest of the assembled media folk. It was certainly a novel way of tackling the issue. But, it doesn't answer the question, says Suveen Sinha in the Hindustan Times

Cricketers, Don Bradman used to say, are temporary custodians of the game whose task is to leave it enhanced. Retirement is not a fight against age or fitness, it is about a battle with yourself. It's time to retire when you have nothing more to offer, when you cannot better yourself, nor the game. But it will be difficult to make that argument at a time when a player's presence in the national team has a great bearing on his fortunes.

Dhoni's remark that no one from the Indian media contingent asked him the question on his retirement just perhaps goes to show how the relationship between the players and the media has changed over the years. While it is a journalist's job to ask questions, today's social media, filled with venom-spitting people who are forever ready to attack, and the PR-managed era has ensured there is an arm's length maintained between the two. It's a far cry from the once-mutually respectful relationship, and has unwittingly led us to stop questioning, and even silencing those that do. Perhaps, it's a pity that no Indian journalist asked the question, writes Siddharth Saxena of the Times of India

Like it or not, our job is to ask you questions. Sure, the question of your retirement peeves you. It would, you're human after all and to be persistently reminded of it would get to anybody. But to mistake our wanting to know as personal - especially after the detached, cavalier manner you bade your farewell from Tests not long ago - gives away something that is not quite in sync with the aloofness you can bring to the game. To wonder out aloud whether we are happy or not that India has finally won, when you are asked to explain a close win over Bangladesh, is wielding that power you hold by sitting on the other side of the table, from a very, very high horse.