Former Indian captain and experienced wicketkeeper-batsman Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who has made a total of 538 international appearances for the national side so far, was born on this day in 1981.

Dhoni made his international debut for India during a One-Day International (ODI) match against Bangladesh in December 2004.A year later, he made a Test debut for Team India against Sri Lanka in Chennai. 

Meanwhile, Dhoni received his maiden cap in the shortest format of the game against New Zealand in Manchester in July 9.
 
In 2007, he was appointed as the captain of the national team across all the three formats of the game and he went on to become one of most successful captains of India. He stepped down from the post in 2017 in order to focus on his performance as a player.

Let us take a look at some of his cricket stats and records:

# Dhoni has notched up 4,876 runs in 90 matches he played for India in the longest format of the game so far.

# The wicketkeeper-batsman has amassed 10,773 runs in 350 ODIs and 1,617 runs in 98 T20Is for India since making his debut.

# Dhoni also became the fourth cricketer from India and 12th player overall to cross the 10,000-run mark in ODIs. He achieved the feat in 273 innings and reached the mark during a clash against England in July 2018.

# Dhoni, whose highest ODI score of 183 came against Sri Lanka in 2005, is also the first Indian and fifth overall to hit 200 sixes in ODIs. 

# The wicketkeeper-batsman is also the first wicket-keeper from the country to complete 4,000 Test runs.He smashed his highest score of 224 against Australia.

# With a total of 829 dismissals across the three formats of the game, Dhoni also tops the list of Indian wicket-takers with most dismissals. Overall, he is standing just behind South Africa’s Mark Boucher (998) and Australia’s Adam Gilchrist (829 dismissals) in the list.

# Dhoni was handed over the captaincy in 2007 during his early days of international career. 

# Under his captaincy, Dhoni had led India in a total of 199 matches in the 50-over format, guiding the side to 110 wins and 74 defeats.

# The wicketkeeper-batsman had also led India in 60 Test matches and helped the team clinch 27 wins.

# Dhoni also holds a decent captaincy record in the Twenty20I format as he led India to 41 victories out of the 72 matches the country played under his leadership.

# Dhoni was conferrerd with Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, India’s highest honor given for achievement in sports, in 2007.

# In 2018, he received Padma Bhushan award–India’s third-highest civilian award in India.

#Dhoni, who has been on an indefinite break since India’s semi-final exit at the 2019 ICC World Cup at the hands of New Zealand, has also guided Chennai Super Kings (CSK) to Indian Premier League (IPL) glory on three occassions.

It is to be noted that Dhoni was all set to make a return as a captain of the CSK in the 2020 edition of IPL, which was originally slated to take place from March 29 to May 24 but was postponed indefinitely by the BCCI in the wake of COVID-19.