"After Announcing Retirement, We Hugged and Cried," Suresh Raina Reveals- More Details Here! 

A day after breaking millions of hearts with the retirement news, former cricketer Suresh Raina shares a few inside stories of what happened on August 15 and why he announced his retirement along with former captain MS Dhoni. 

In a recent interaction with popular daily, Dainik Jagran, Raina revealed that he was aware of the fact that MS Dhoni would announce his retirement upon landing in Chennai. 

On August 14, Raina and Dhoni, along with Piyush Chawla, Deepak Chahar and Karn Sharma landed in Chennai. A day later, the former India captain announced to the world his retirement through a post on Instagram. Minutes after Dhoni announced his retirement, Raina followed him. 

“I knew Dhoni would announce his retirement upon reaching Chennai, so I was ready. I, Piyush Chawla, Deepak Chahar and Karn Sharma reached Ranchi on 14 August with the chartered plane, and picked up Mahi bhai and Monu Singh. After announcing our retirement, we hugged and cried a lot. I, Piyush, Ambati Rayudu, Kedar Jadhav and Karn sat together after that, and talked about our careers and our relationship. We partied during the night," Raina told Dainik Jagran. 

As per NDTV sports report, Raina made his retirement official when he posted about the same on his social media handle and later to the BCCI. 

Further revealing as to why they decided to retire on August 15, Raina said: “We had already made up our minds to retire on Saturday (August 15). Dhoni’s jersey number is 7 and mine is 3 - put it together and it makes 73. And on August 15, India completed 73 years of independence, so there couldn’t have been a better day."

“Dhoni began his career on 23 December (2004) against Bangladesh in Chittagong, while I made my debut on 30 July (2005) against Sri Lanka. Both of us almost began together in international cricket, remained together at CSK, and so we now retired together and will continue to play in IPL together," he finally added.