Dhoni wants to concentrate on the shorter format of the game and said that the strain of playing all the three formats was getting to him.
After India lost the Border-Gavaskar series to Australia on Tuesday, with one more Test to go, India's most successful Test captain decided to call time on his Test career with immediate effect.
Dhoni, under whom India had become the world's number 1 Test side, wants to concentrate on the shorter format of the game and said that the strain of playing all the three formats was getting to him.
ALSO SEE MS Dhoni's Test profile
Virat Kohli, who captained India in the first Test match will be leading the side in the final match as well, starting from January 6 at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
Dhoni played 90 Tests for India, scoring 4876 runs. He effected a total of 294 dismissals.
ALSO SEE "He could've played Tests for a year more"
Under his captaincy, India won the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup in 2007, the 50-over World Cup in 2011 and remained the number one Test team for 18 months from December 2009. He received Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, India's highest sports honour, in 2007.
Regarded as one of India's greatest captain, MS Dhoni has been a revelation in the game of cricket. With his unorthodox style of batting, Dhoni was not considered an ideal batsman for Test cricket, but he has proved everyone wrong as India won the top prize in all formats of the game under his captaincy.
ALSO SEE Dhoni completed 10 years in international cricket
"One of India's greatest Test Captains under whose leadership India became the No. 1 team in the Test Rankings MS Dhoni, has decided to retire from Test Cricket citing the strain of playing all formats of Cricket," the BCCI said in a statement.
Dhoni's sudden retirement from Tests surprised cricket fraternity around the world, including the Indian skipper's childhood coach Chanchal Bhattacharya who told Cricketnext Dhoni could have played Tests for a year.
"He could have postponed his Test retirement for a year or so, but I think he wanted to focus on defending the World Cup," Bhattarcharya said.
Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar said that Dhoni's retirement news was as surprising to him as to anybody and he never expected the 'Captain Cool' to quit Tests altogether.
"The decision comes as a huge surprise. Though it is not sudden. I was expecting him to step down from captaincy after the Sydney match but did not think he will retire as a player. I still think that he had 2 or 3 more years of cricket left in him," Gavaskar said.
Dhoni made his Test debut against Sri Lanka in 2005, scoring 30 in the rain-hit match in Chennai. He went on to play 90 Tests for India, amassing 4876 runs at a 38-plus average, hitting six centuries and 33 fifties. He also took 256 catches and contributed 38 stumpings.
Dhoni's highest Test score of 224 came against Australia in February 2013. Dhoni also became the first Indian wicket-keeper to complete 4000 runs in Test cricket. He has also crossed Sourav Ganguly's record of 21 Test wins to become the most successful Test captain for India. It was under his captaincy that India became the first team in more than 40 years to whitewash Australia in a Test series.
India's string of away Test defeats remains a blot on his captaincy records, though, and the emergence of Virat Kohli was seen as an alternative. He surpassed retired great Sachin Tendulkar as the highest-earning Indian sportsman but remains a fiercely private person.
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