Does Mahendra Singh Dhoni smoke?: No.Does Mahendra Singh Dhoni drink alcohol?: Yes, occasionally.His family belongs to Lawli, a village in Almora district in Uttarakhand. In the 1970s, his father, Pan Singh, left the village to work in a steel factory in Ranchi. MS Dhoni’s family’s ancestral home in Lwali village, Almora district in Uttarakhand.MS Dhoni’s surname is ‘Dhauni’ and not Dhoni. According to his uncle Ghanpath Singh Dhauni, his surname was wrongly entered in the school certificates, which could not be rectified even after multiple requests. [11]Business Standard.He secured 65% in his 10th Board exams.In 1993, he was first spotted as a goalkeeper by KR Banerjee, the cricket coach at his school, who later asked him to try his hand in wicket-keeping. MS Dhoni in younger days.It was PC Poddar, the former cricket captain of Bengal, who saw great potential in him during the Talent Resource Development Wing (TRDW) match in Jamshedpur. After which, he was selected in the Bihar U19 team in the 1998/99 season, where he scored 176 runs in 5 matches.In 2002, when Dhoni was trying for a place in the India team, he fell in love with a girl named Priyanka Jha. But, unfortunately, Priyanka died in an accident, the same year.Though he played as a senior for Bihar from 1999 to 2003, his consistent performance was ignored by East Zone selectors, after which he was moved to West Bengal, where he started working as a ticket collector at Kharagpur railway station for 3 years (2001-2003).In 2003, Sourav Ganguly approached him to move to Kolkata, but he denied the offer and went back to Bihar, where he went to the National Cricket Academy.