The dressing room is a place overabundant with a plethora of emotions and actions exhibited by cricketers in the course of their journey. However, most of the incidents rarely make it to the public forum unless the players or staff involved choose to speak up regarding the same.
Former Indian cricketer Hemang Badani had revealed an amusing incident from 2002 when Sachin Tendulkar decided to play a hilarious prank on Jagaval Srinath to lighten up his mood in what was the last one-day series for the Indian speedster.
Badani recalled that Srinath was unusually tensed before the match against England in Cuttack. Tendulkar sensed the uneasiness weighing down Srinath and decided to take this matter in his own hands.
“For some strange reason at Cuttack, he [Srinath] was extremely nervous, extremely wobbly, which he normally isn’t,” Badani said during an Instagram live session.
“Java is extremely vocal and very confident in his normal self, but for some strange reason, he was a little nervous that day.
“I wasn’t playing that game. Srinath, obviously being a 6-feet-2, 6-feet-3, had really long pants and Sachin, being about 5-feet-5, 5-feet-6 had shorter pants.”
“To just try and lighten the mood and to make sure that Srinath got back to normalcy, during practice before the game when the match hadn’t started yet, he[Sachin Tendulkar] asked me to switch trousers,” Badani revealed.
The 43-year old further said Srinath didn’t really notice the size of his trouser and fell to the prank set up by the batting legend.
“Srinath being Srinath doesn’t even care. He finishes his practise, gets back to the dressing room, puts his trousers on, gets on the field, bowls the first ball, and there are people laughing on the field. The Indian side was laughing on the field and little does he realise what has happened,” Badani remarked.
“Then someone points at his trousers and said, ‘Sri, look at your trousers, they’re so short.’ That’s when he realises that something is wrong. Actually, what has happened after that is, because of this banter and lighter moment, he gets back to being normal and bowls a brilliant spell.”
Although India lost that match by a paltry 16 runs, the plan worked well to ease up Srinath’s mood as the latter bowled remarkably well and finished the match with economical figures of 41-1.
Here’s the video:
🎥1️⃣ from #StorieswithHemangBadani – The story of how Sachin weaved a magical plan even before the start of a game to ensure Javagal Srinath had a very memorable outing. It also includes the story how I pretended nothing happened 😁🙂 #Cricket #Sachin #TeamIndia #Srinath pic.twitter.com/Coc7COrpI1
— Hemang Badani (@hemangkbadani) June 30, 2020
