Watch: When MS Dhoni bowled to Brendon McCullum in a Test match, with Virat Kohli keeping wicket
Watch: In the Wellington Test match of 2013/14, MS Dhoni bowled to Brendon McCullum and BJ Watling as Virat Kohli kept wicket.
New Zealand were 1-0 up in the two-match Test series, but in the second Test, in Wellington, they bowled New Zealand out for 192, piling on 438, and reduced the hosts to 94-5 by the third morning.
At that point, MS Dhoni – in his last year as Test captain – would have been optimistic about a win, only to watch New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum and wicketkeeper BJ Watling thwart the Indian bowlers for the rest of the day and well into the next day.
McCullum made 302, the first Test triple hundred for New Zealand. He added 352 with Watling (124) and another 179 with debutant Jimmy Neesham (137 not out), and eventually declared on 680-8.
Before all that, when New Zealand were 440-5, Dhoni had decided to have a bowl himself. He had bowled in Test cricket before, most famously the 10 overs across innings at Lord’s in 2011 after Zaheer Khan had limped off the field.
Kapil Dev criticised Dhoni for the decision to bowl himself, accusing him of “making a mockery of Test cricket”.
Less than two months before the Wellington Test, Dhoni and AB de Villiers had set the first instance of both wicketkeepers bowling in a Test match. On that occasion, Virat Kohli had kept wicket.
In ODIs, he had also taken a wicket, of Travis Dowlin of the West Indies, in the 2009 Champions Trophy.
Here, tea was taken after the 158th over of the innings. After the interval, Dhoni opened bowling, with the new ball two overs away as Kohli took up the big gloves. The over went for five, Watling scoring four of them.
Dhoni and Kohli, who had bowled five overs by then, switched positions after the over. After that over, Dhoni claimed the new ball and recalled Mohammed Shami and Zaheer Khan.
It was the last time Dhoni bowled in international cricket.
