Relations between Virender Sehwag and Mahendra Singh Dhoni never seemed to have been bad. However, there were a couple of occasions when the media was full of speculation about a rift between the two. One such incident occurred during India's tour of Australia in 2011/12 when Dhoni seemingly criticised Viru along with Sachin Tendulkar and Gautam Gambhir in public.
During the tri-series in the latter part of the tour, which involved apart from India and the home team, Sri Lanka, MSD adopted a rotation policy as per which he never played all these three senior players in the same match. Justifying this tactic in a press conference, Mahi said it was due to them being somewhat slow in the field.
Now, all these years later, in an interview, Viru has opened up about that incident and has revealed that Dhoni's comments in that press conference were made without him ever having discussed the matter with the three senior players.
"When MS Dhoni said in Australia that top three are slow fielders, we were never asked or consulted. We got to know from the media. He said at the press conference but not at the team meeting that we are slow fielders," Sehwag said in the interview.
He further added: "During our time, captain used to go and talk with the player (being dropped). Now I don't know if Virat Kohli does the same or not. I am not part of the team setup. But people say that when Rohit Sharma went to Asia Cup as captain, he used to talk to all the players."
While Sehwag has asserted since his retirement that there was never any animosity between him and MSD, there does seem to be some resentment on the part of the former opening batsman. This was illustrated with the example of Rishabh Pant's dropping that he gave in the interview to Cricbuzz .
"Rishabh Pant has been left out, how will he score runs? If you bench Sachin Tendulkar also, he won't be able to score runs. If you feel he is a match-winner, why don't you play him? Because he is not consistent?"
In the tri-series of 2012, Dhoni had the rotation policy in place until a situation arose where India were on the verge of getting knocked out of the tournament. Then, Dhoni decided to play all the three senior players who, less than a year ago, had led India to World Cup glory while batting in the top-3. India won that match but eventually failed to make the final.
During one of the matches of that series, Sehwag had taken a great catch and in the post-match press conference, when asked about Dhoni's comments, he tersely responded: "Did you see my catch?" In an interview some months ago, Gautam Gambhir, another aggrieved player from that entire episode, also expressed his displeasure and criticised Dhoni for having adopted the rotation policy.
