MS Dhoni underwent surgery on his left knee in a Mumbai hospital on Thursday.
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 has 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," CSK CEO Kasi Viswanathan was quoted as saying by PTI. "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."
According to PTI, 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," a CSK source was quoted as saying. "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."
Dhoni had played the entire IPL season with a heavily strapped left knee and although he looked absolutely okay while keeping, more often than not he batted as late as No. 8 and didn't look swift while running between the wickets. After leading the side to their fifth IPL title, though, Dhoni had said he would return for "at least" one more season for the fans, if his body allowed it.
"If you circumstantially see, it's the best time to announce retirement." Dhoni had said. "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."
On Wednesday, CSK CEO Kasi Viswanathan had said that it was "completely Dhoni's call" when asked if the captain will decide against playing next season and thus free up a purse of INR 12 crore for the mini-auction.
"Frankly, we are not even thinking along those lines as we haven't reached that stage," Viswanathan had said. "It will be completely Dhoni's call. But I can tell you, in CSK, we haven't entertained those thoughts."