She was very beautiful, and suddenly I was in love again! I thought to myself, ‘She is the one for me, and I am going to marry her,'” Dhawan wrote in his autobiography as quoted by Sportstar.
“I started with a half-century in a practice game, and my tour was progressing well. After every game, I would go over to meet up with Ellen (not her real name) and I soon started smuggling her into my hotel room which I was sharing with Rohit Sharma. Now and then, he would complain in Hindi. ‘Will you let me sleep?’
“One evening, when I headed for dinner with Ellen, news of her presence spread like wildfire throughout the entire squad. A senior national selector, who was on tour with us, spotted us walking in the lobby with our hands linked.
“It didn’t even occur to me that I should let go of her hand, because to me, we were committing no crime. There was a good chance that if I had performed consistently on that Australia tour, I would have made it to the senior Indian side, but my performance kept dipping.”
Dhawan appeared in 34 Tests, 167 ODIs and 68 T20Is for India. His best came in the 50-over format in which he amassed 6793 runs at an average of 44.11. The southpaw smashed 17 hundreds and 39 fifties.
In the Test format, Dhawan averaged 40.61 for his 2315 runs. He hit 7 tons and 5 half-centuries.
