Former India cricket team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni recently celebrated his 39th birthday. Wishes came pouring in from around the world right from Indian and foreign players to Bollywood. He has made and impact everywhere. Regarded as one of the greatest cricketing minds, he has won every trophy possible as the captain of the Indian side, he has often been the topic of discussion between cricket pundits. But behind all these records and success is a humble beginning. Everyone knows about his pre-cricketing life from his biopic, but former teammate Gautam Gambhir revealed another instance of his early days. 

In Star Sports’ newly launched chat show, ‘Cricket Connected’, Gambhir recalled sharing a room with Dhoni for one and half month during an initial phase of their international cricket careers. He said, “We were roommates for more than a month and all we used to talk about was ‘hair,’ because he had those long hair back then. We talked about how he would maintain his hair and all that stuff.” 

Gambhir, who played an important role along with Dhoni in the 2011 World Cup final, recalled getting to know him when they stayed together. He said, “We were both young, MS Dhoni and I had recently started playing international cricket together. We went to Kenya together, we went for India A tour to Zimbabwe together, and spent a lot of time together. But when you share a room for a month and a half with someone, you get to know a lot about that person.”

In the episode which had Jatin Sapru talk to Gambhir, former South Africa captain Graeme Smith and former Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara, the former India opener also compared Dhoni and Sourav Ganguly as captains. He said, “Dhoni has been a very lucky captain because he got an amazing team in every format. Captaining 2011 World Cup team was very easy for Dhoni because we had players like Sachin, Sehwag, myself, Yuvraj, Yusuf, Virat, so he had got the best teams, while Ganguly had to work very hard for it, and as a result Dhoni won so many trophies.”