Flashback: When MS Dhoni stunned everyone by talking about stopping in 'Red Light Areas'

Former India captain MS Dhoni is not an individual who sees slip of tongue in public. The Ranchi cricketer is, in fact, one of those public figures who is idolized for his conduct – be it on the ground or off it. But an old video recently surfaced that showed a young Dhoni making a major blunder with his words during a post-match talk with commentator Harsha Bhogle. The Twitterati was stunned to hear the ace player though he did not mean what he said.

It was after a game in the Indian Premier League (IPL) in an older edition in Chennai. The home team – Chennai Super Kings (CSK) – had won the game and Bhogle was speaking to the two captains. He first spoke with Sourav Ganguly, the then captain of the losing team Kolkata Knight Riders before meeting Dhoni, skipper of the local side.

Did dhoni want to mean red light at traffic?

As the crowd cheered, Bhogle told Dhoni that despite being from Ranchi, the CSK captain is no less popular with the Chennai crowd. To that Dhoni said: “I think the people in Chennai, they just love me.” And then he said something unbelievable. Citing an anecdote, Dhoni said whenever he used to go out biking in the night in Chennai during the first edition of the IPL (2008), the local people came towards him and spoke in Tamil when he stopped in the “red-light areas”!

“During the first edition, when I used to go out biking in the night, wherever I used to stop in red-light areas, they always used to come up to me and speak in Tamil. So, I think they really love me over here,” he told.

By “red-light areas”, one is sure that the legend didn’t mean it and rather intended to mean the traffic signals, when they turned red and made him stop. Dhoni last played for India in the semi-final of the ICC World Cup 2019 when he failed to take his team to the final narrowly. He hasn’t played in the next two limited-overs series against the West Indies and South Africa and is also set to miss the next opponents – Bangladesh.

You can watch the video here