Dhoni was born and brought up in the city of Ranchi. He has two siblings. A sister who is married and a brother who lives in Almora. Almora is a high-lying town at the foot of the Himalaya which is his father's home town. His father's name is Pan Singh and mother's name is Devki Devi.
Dhoni (affectionately known as Mahi), made his debut for Jharkhand in the 1999-2000 season as an eighteen year old. Dhoni started off his career with modest performances at the local level. The national team selectors noticed him in 2004 after his performances in first class tournaments such as the Deodhar Trophy and the Duleep Trophy. Dhoni was selected to represent India 'A' on a tour of Kenya and his performances were good enough to win him selection in the Indian national team, making his one-day international debut against Bangladesh in Chittagong in December of that year.
On the 31st of October, Dhoni broke the record of highest runs scored by a wicket keeper by securing 183 runs off 145 balls against Srilanka which was played at Jaipur. He also hold the reccord of hitting highest number of sixes in a innings by a wicketkeeper. He also broke Saeed Anwar's record of most runs scored off boundaries by scoring a total of 120 runs off 4s and 6s eclipsing the previous record of 118.
At the end of the year Dhoni was rewarded a BCCI contract, starting with a B-grade contract.
Before he started playing cricket, he was a football goalkeeper. Its said he drinks around four litres of milk everyday but he denied it by saying that has been exaggerated a bit. He said he loves milk and drinks around a litre on a daily basis.
On the 2nd of December 2005, Dhoni made his Test cricket debut against Srilanka which was played in Chennai, India.
23 June 06 Flamboyant wicketkeeper-batsman Mahendra Singh Dhoni has been voted as the MTV Youth Icon of the year 2006. Dhoni garnered maximum number of votes to win the honour ahead of five other heavyweights -- Navjot Singh Sidhu (television), Abhijeet Sawant (music), Vijay Mallaya (business), President A P J Abdul Kalam (science), John Abraham (film).