Shikhar Dhawan

Some Lesser Known Facts About Shikhar Dhawan

• Does Shikhar Dhawan smoke?: No

• Does Shikhar Dhawan drink alcohol?: Yes

• Shikhar was born into a middle-class Punjabi family with roots in Ludhiana. 

• His cousin used to play for Sonnet Club, Delhi. Watching him play, he developed his interest in cricket, after which his parents enrolled him at the Sonnet Club, aged 12, under the coaching of Tarak Sinha.

• The same year, he scored a century in a U-15 school tournament.

• When he joined the club, he was more of a wicket-keeper than a batsman.

• While he was playing domestic cricket, there was a time when he was continually overlooked by the selectors, which frustrated him so much that he wanted to quit playing cricket. 

• On his ODI debut, he got out on a “duck” and scored a “century” on his Test debut.

• He was selected ahead of Virender Sehwag on his Test debut, and he fully justified his selection by hitting the fastest century on Test debut — in just 85 balls.

• His Ghajini haircut, curved moustache, and the way he twirls his moustache is a trendsetter among the youths.

• His wife Ayesha Mukherji who was settled in Australia was introduced to him by their common friend Harbhajan Singh on Facebook. Later, they both got into a relationship and got married.

• His wife Ayesha is half-Bengali and half-British, who hails from Melbourne, Australia. She has 2 children with her first husband and 1 child with Shikhar Dhawan.

• His wife is 10 years older than him.

• He has a signature style of celebration after taking a catch.

• He is known to be a grounded person and he credits Sufi songs for it as it taught him to treat success and failure in the same way.

• In September 2021, his wife, Ayesha, took to Instagram to announce that Shikhar and she had parted ways after nine years of marriage. In her Instagram post, she wrote,
  

  I THOUGHT DIVORCE WAS A DIRTY WORD UNTIL I BECAME A 2 TIME DIVORCEE. Funny how words can have such powerful meanings and associations. I experienced this first hand as a divorcee. The first time I went through a divorce I was soooooooo fu@kn scared. I felt like I had failed and I was doing something so wrong at that time. I felt as if I had let everyone down and even felt selfish. I felt that I was letting my parents down, I felt that I was letting my children down and even to some extent I felt as if I was letting God down. Divorce was such a dirty word. So now imagine, I have to go through it a second time. Woooahhhhhh. That is terrifying. Being divorced once before already, felt like I had more at stake the second time round. I had more to prove. So when my second marriage broke down it was really scary.”

  On 4 October 2023, Shikhar Dhawan was granted a divorce from Ayesha by a court in Delhi. The divorce was granted on the grounds of “mental cruelty” that Shikhar had experienced from Ayesha. ^[3]The Tribune

• He confirmed his relationship with Sophie Shine through a post on Instagram in May 2025.

• In May 2025, he was featured in his first Hindi song, Besos, along with Jacqueline Fernandez.