While recalling the incident from Indian Premier League 2022 in which Hardik Pandya shouted at him, star India pacer Mohammed Shami spoke his heart out. Notably, both of them were playing together for Gujarat Titans when the incident took place. Hardik, the then captain of the side, lost his cool in the field and had a go at senior player Shami after the fast bowler didn’t go for a catch on the bowling of the skipper while fielding at third man. Gujarat Titans were desperately looking for wickets at that point in game, and Shami’s unimpressive effort saw Hardik getting angry.
“I usually don’t respond to such things, but when things get too bad, then I do speak up. We have a good connection and are friends. He didn’t realize it at that moment. We’ve known each other for almost 10 years. He told me, ‘I swear, I don’t know what I’ve said.’ Crores of people watch us on screen, we need to control our emotions,” Shami said on Shubhankar Mishra’s YouTube channel as quoted by Sportskeeda.
Earlier, Shami had expressed his shock over the T20I retirement of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, saying filling their places in the team is going to be tough task.
Shortly after India won its second T20 World Cup with a seven-run win over South Africa at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Kohli was adjudged the Player-of-the-Match award for his 59-ball 76 and said this was the last T20 of his international career. The right-hander ended his T20I career as India’s second-highest run-scorer in the format, through 4188 runs in 125 games at an average of 48.69 and strike rate of 137.04.
Later on, Rohit in the post-match press conference announced that he’s joining Virat in ending his T20I career, finsihing his T20I career as the highest scorerwith 4231 runs in 159 matches – and also holding the record for the most centuries in men’s T20Is via fine tons.
(With IANS Inputs)
