Muralitharan reveals WHY MS Dhoni came to bat before Yuvraj in 2011 World Cup.

Sri Lanka’s magical spinner and former Chennai Super Kings’ player Muttiah Muralitharan reveals the real reason of MS Dhoni’s coming up in the batting order in the ICC cricket world Cup 2011 when Sri Lanka was defending the score of 274 runs against India, chasing the target India lost 3 wickets for 114 runs and it was expected that the next batter to came on the crease was Yuvraj Singh but to everyone’s surprise MS Dhoni came to bat up in the order and that decision worked in India’s favor as the captain cool hit a match winning knock and the memories of the winning six which he hit to lift the ICC world cup trophy is still fresh in the minds of Indian cricket fans when Sri Lankan team was preparing for Yuvraj Singh spinner Muttiah Muralitharan knew that MS Dhoni would going to come next instead of Yuvraj.

Indian and Sri Lankan players were attending the ICC event where the fixtures for the ICC World Cup 2023 were released, when it was asked to Muttiah Muralitharan to share his thoughts on 2011 ICC world Cup finals when MS Dhoni came out to bat before in-form Yuvraj Singh he said he knew that Dhoni would come first as Yuvraj Singh wasn’t comfortable facing him and India was stumbling MS Dhoni knew how to play him as they both play for the same team in the IPL and Dhoni has faced Muralitharan several times in net session during IPL due to which promoting himself before Yuvraj Singh was a tactical move.

I knew because Yuvraj (Singh) was not very comfortable to play me, although he was the best player in World Cup at that time, middle-order number four position. I knew because I was bowling a lot against him (Dhoni) in the nets in Chennai while playing in the IPL. So Dhoni knew how to play me very well. So I thought he didn’t want to give any wickets to me, because I was wicketless despite bowling well

Muralitharan said

There was a lot of dew at that time and we couldn’t spin the ball much. Gambhir was there at the other end, so when we got the wicket definitely I knew he will come, because he knows how to play me very well as I’ve played for Chennai Super Kings.

He added