Very few people can claim to be close friends of MS Dhoni. Hardik Pandya surely can. The all-rounder is among the handful of Indian cricketers – Rishabh Pant being the other one – who spends time with Dhoni off the field quite often. A couple of days gap he got in between the ODI and T20I series against New Zealand, gave Hardik Pandya the opportunity to share another one of those off-the-field moments with MS Dhoni.

Hardik, who is slated to lead in the T20Is for the third time in a row in the three-match series against New Zealand starting on January 27, took to Twitter to share a ‘Sholay’ moment with Dhoni in what appears to be the vintage garage of the legendary Indian captain in Ranchi, where the first T20I will be played on Friday.

Hardik shared two photos with Dhoni. In both of them, he was sitting in the driver’s seat while Dhoni positioned himself in the sidecar. “Sholay 2 coming soon,” Hardik captioned the photo in which both the cricketers are seen in casual wear.

In the famous Bollywood movie Sholay, legendary actors Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan featured in that iconic bike scene during the song ‘Yeh dosti hum nahi todenge’. Dharmendra, who plays Veeru was the bike rider while Bachchan, Jai in Sholay, was the one sitting in the sidecar. The duo swap positions towards the end of the song sequence.

The post went viral instantly with fans retweeting and commenting in numbers.

India are coming on the back of six successive ODI victories – three against Sri Lanka, and three against New Zealand. Their 90-run victory in the third ODI against New Zealand in Indore took them to the top of the ODI rankings dethroning England.

In T20Is too India have been in pretty good form. Hardik is yet to lose a series as captain. He successfully led India against Ireland, New Zealand (away) and Sri Lanka.

The Indian T20I side will be without the likes of Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and KL Rahul. India head coach Rahul Dravid, however, has maintained that their T20I careers are far from finished and the decision to give them a break from the shortest format was only taken keeping workload management ahead of the ODI World Cup this year in mind.