In a celebrity chat show ‘Up Close & Personal with PZ’ hosted by Bollywood actress and Kings XI Punjab owner Preity Zinta, Yuvraj Singh opened up about a prank in the Indian dressing room which was played on the former skipper Sourav Ganguly in 2005.
Yuvraj revealed that during this funny incident, Dada was almost in tears and decided to give up his captaincy.
As told by the left-hander, here’s what happened :
Before the match against Pakistan, Ganguly entered the dressing room for the team meeting. It was routine for him but he was not aware of the pre-planned prank by the team members.
When Ganguly entered the room there was complete silence and Yuvraj went up to the skipper with the fake newspaper containing Ganguly’s interview in which he had made some personal comments against several players.
“We arranged a printout of an imaginary interview of Sourav, where he’d been critical of his players. When that was shown to him, he pleaded he had not given any such interview” revealed Yuvraj Singh.
Sourav, in desperation, offered to resign from captaincy and promised he had never made such statements, after seeing Harbhajan Singh and Ashish Nehra storm out of the dressing room.
On the verge of his breaking point, Sourav just could not take it anymore. Rahul Dravid (who else) could not bear to see his captain like this and told him it was an April fool’s prank.
“Dada picked up a bat and chased all of us out of the dressing room” said Yuvraj, unable to control his laughter.
“I was more relieved than embarrassed,” Ganguly said, years later. Incidentally, he was given another sheet of paper signed by all. He could barely find the courage to read, but when he did, it warmed his heart. It simply read: “Dada, we all love you.”
Ganguly promptly hugged each one of his boys, but gave them a strict warning, never to do the same again.
