5 revelations from MS Dhoni's life and career that came to the fore in the biopic

#2 Dhoni’s tryst with Priyanka Jha

Dhoni (played by Sushant Singh Rajput) in the movie first met Priyanka, his first love, during the 2005 series vs Pakistan

While Dhoni’s love-affair with his wife Sakshi Dhoni is a well-chronicled one, what most of his fans would not have been aware of was his other love interest, Priyanka Jha. One of the most shocking revelations from the movie, Dhoni’s first-love and the tragedy associated with it would have surely taken many of his fans by surprise.

During Pakistan’s 2005 tour to India, Dhoni had had a couple of torrid outings in the first two ODIs. While travelling from Kochi to Visakhapatnam the cricketer crossed ways with Priyanka, a cricket enthusiast and a big Sachin Tendulkar fan, who coincidentally happened to be Dhoni’s fellow passenger in the flight.

At first, the lady was only interested in using Dhoni to get herself Tendulkar’s autograph, recognising the cricketer as someone associated with the team, but not knowing exactly who he was.

After she found out about the role that Dhoni played in the team, she was apologetic. However, the cricketer urged her not to apologise while accepting the fact that he had not done anything worth remembering by then.

Perhaps it was this simplicity that impressed Jha the most, and she predicted that Dhoni would definitely perform well in the next game, that was to be organised at Vizag. And so it happened, as the Jharkhand cricketer blew away the Pakistan bowlers on his way to a magnificent 148, which was his first ODI century.

It was then and there that their love story took shape, and over the course of the next two years, it blossomed into a romantic relationship. Luck, however, was not to favour Dhoni even in his life off the cricket field, as when the cricketer was playing Pakistan during the 2007 ODI series, Jha, who was a resident of Delhi met with a fatal accident and passed away.

Dhoni was made known of this incident upon his arrival in Ranchi from the Pakistan tour, and the news of losing his beloved broke him into pieces.