Former India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni successfully underwent a left knee surgery in a Mumbai hospital on Thursday, raising hopes of playing in the 17th edition of Indian Premier League next year.
Dhoni, who led Chennai Super Kings to their fifth IPL title, had flown to Mumbai from Ahmedabad after the final on Monday and consulted renowned sports orthopaedic surgeon Dr Dinshaw Pardiwala, who is also on the BCCI medical panel and had performed surgeries on a number of top Indian cricketers, including Rishabh Pant.
"Yes, Dhoni has had a successful knee surgery at the Kokilaben Hospital in Mumbai on Thursday. He is doing fine and the surgery happened in the morning. I don't have details. I am yet to get all the details about the nature of surgery and other things," CSK CEO Kasi Viswanathan confirmed to PTI.
It's learnt that Dhoni has already been discharged from the hospital after a keyhole surgery was performed for "arthroscopic repair".
"He has already been discharged from hospital and he has gone back to Ranchi. He would be resting for a few days at home before his extensive rehabilitation starts. It is now expected that he would have enough time to get fit to play in the next IPL," another source close to CSK management told PTI on conditions of anonymity.
Dhoni had played the entire season with heavy strapping on his left knee and while he looked absolutely fine during wicket-keeping, he came into bat as low as No. 8 at times and didn't look in his element while running between the wickets.
On Wednesday, Viswanathan had said that whether Dhoni wants to undergo surgery will be completely the iconic captain's call.
After the IPL final, Dhoni had said: "If you circumstantially see, it's the best time to announce retirement. The easy thing for me to say is thank you and retire. But the hard thing to do is to work hard for nine months and try to play one more IPL season. The body has to hold up. But the amount of love I have received from CSK fans, it would be a gift for them to play one more season.
"The way they've shown their love and emotion, it's something I need to do for them. It's the last part of my career. It started over here and full house was chanting my name. It was same thing in Chennai, but it will be good to come back and play whatever I can. The kind of cricket I play, they feel they can play that cricket. There's nothing orthodox about it and I like to keep it simple."
