Captain Cool takes guard for second innings

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Gible bachelor Mahendra Singh Dhoni is officially off the market. The Indian cricket captain married childhood friend Sakshi Singh Rawat, a 23-year-old hotel management student, in a lavish, yet fiercely private ceremony outside Dehradun on Sunday.
The wedding took everyone by surprise, and came only a day after the two had got engaged.
The date had earlier been set for October after the Australia tour of India, but after the news of engagement broke out on Saturday, the family decided to bind the two in wedlock as soon as possible.
Due to the sudden change in plans, only a handful of his Team India mates and celebrity friends were in attendance at the Vishranti Resort of Lower Kandolli, Prem Nagar, outside Dehradun when the ceremony began at 8.16 pm, the mahurat set by Dhoni’s family pundit.
The ceremony carried into the wee hours of Monday morning with jaimala taking place an hour after the ceremony started. Pheras began just before midnight.
Dhoni on a horseback and the groom’s party walked for around half a kilometre to the
bride’s place, located at the same resort premises. He wore a black sherwani while Sakshi was dressed up in white churidar-pyjama.
Cricketers Suresh Raina, Ashish Nehra, R.P. Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Praveen Kumar and Piyush Chawla were present along with the Bollywood star John Abraham and film director Farah Khan to bless the couple at the venue that is situated on the Dehradun-Chakrata road on the fringes of Uttaranchal’s protected Sal forests. Close to 60 relatives from both the families of the bride and the groom oversaw the rituals.
Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar and India opener Gautam Gambhir were conspicuous by their absence, as was his pal Yuvraj Singh. Dhoni will, however, be holding a reception in Mumbai on Wednesday where all his cricket friends are expected to attend along with top BCCI officials. “I’ll be at the reception,” Gambhir told this newspaper on Sunday.
Captain Cool, who has strived to keep his life away from the public gaze, is understood to have chosen the venue because of the privacy it offered.
The media was kept out. And the hordes of mediapersons and television OB vans that had gathered there were halted by private security guards, more than one-and-a-half kilometres from the venue.
The venue is incidentally owned by former Rajasthan chief minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Vasundhara Raje, 20 kms from where his engagement was held on Saturday, at Bhagirath resort. It also boasts of a cricket connection with signed bats and commemorative trophies belonging to Michael Dalvi — a star batsman for Delhi and Tamil Nadu in the 1960s and ‘70s — exhibited at the venue.
The newly-weds only have a few days for each other before the cricket resumes. After Wednesday’s reception, the India captain will leave for Chennai before flying out to Colombo on Friday for a 45-day tour of Sri Lanka.