Robin Uthappa has recently revealed an interesting incident that involves CSK captain MS Dhoni’s hilarious way of handling the high temper of S Sreesanth back in the day. The incident took place during a T20 match against Australia in 2007.
Robin Uthappa explains how MSD handles Sreesanth
Speaking on the YouTube show ‘Wake Up With Sorabh’ by stand-up comedian Sorabh Pant, Uthappa recalled that the Indian team was playing against Australia just after the 2007 T20 World Cup.
Narrating the incident, Uthappa said that it was either Andrew Symonds or Michael Hussey who had backed up from the crease and Sreesanth stopped between his run-up and took the stumps off, and started appealing to the umpire by continuously saying, “How is that?”. Seeing this, MS Dhoni came running from his position and told Sreesanth, “Just go bowl bro” after pulling him aside.
Watch Robin Uthappa Chat with Sorabh
Later in the episode, Uthappa also spoke about how the likes of Sreesanth, Gautam Gambhir, and himself would be in charge of sledging against the Australians because the rest of the team would be ‘gentlemen’.
Uthappa also spoke about how impressive Sreesanth’s return to domestic cricket has been, saying that his outswingers and his release are still one of the best in the country — “at par with Kapil Dev and Mohammed Shami”.
“He would be bowling at around 125 kph now, if he can keep his discipline and keep working on his bowling, he can build up his pace into the 130s and still turn out to be a dangerous bowler,” Uthappa said of the 38-year-old Sreesanth.
Uthappa Shares T20WC Finals rivalry with Pakistan
Uthappa then looked back at the final of the T20 World Cup, in which India edged Pakistan by two runs to be crowned World Champions.
In a moment that will go down in the folklore of Indian cricket, Misbah-Ul-Haq tried to play an aerial scoop shot off Joginder Sharma, but ended up skying the ball to short fine leg, where Sreesanth completed the catch.
Uthappa, who was standing at long on, recalled the thoughts that were going through his mind between the time the ball went in the air and landed in Sreesanth’s hands.
“I was standing at long on. So many things happened during that match. When that ball went in the air, my first thought was ‘ok, who is at short fine leg?’.
And when I saw it’s Sree, I started sprinting and I was praying ‘Please pull us through.’ Because again, you don’t lose a World Cup final to Pakistan. There’s just something that we always get the better of them in a World Cup,” Uthappa added.
