With every six that Sanju Samson was hitting against Rising Pune Supergiant on Tuesday (April 11), a huge roar was heard from a locality of Vadodara where Irfan Pathan resides. The India fast bowler’s bungalow’s gates were wide open and his father was making sure that every guest was served with the tasty mutton biriyani. The reason behind the party was crystal clear. The Pathan family was celebrating another poor performance from the Pune-based outfit.
Irfan Pathan was a part of the franchise in the 2016 edition and was given just four games to prove himself. That was not the end, he was even released by the franchise before the player’s auction earlier this year where he went unsold.
It was definitely a painful experience for the player who was once compared to the legendary Kapil Dev to see those players, who are not even compared with Manoj Prabhakar, getting multi-millions deals.
The woeful performance of Ashok Dinda and Ben Stokes only made the crowd, led by Irfan himself, to further test the ability of their vocal chords.
But suddenly all the noise and the glitzy affair turned into absolute silence. Irfan Pathan suddenly noticed a familiar yet uncommon face among the hundreds of guest. The uncommon face was none other than Sanjiv Goenka- the owner of Rising Pune Supergiant. A couple of minutes later another famous face joined Goenka- Stephen Fleming- the coach of the franchise.
Fast forward a couple of hours, the official website of Rising Pune Supergiants displays this:
” Welcome back Irfan!!”
As expected, the whole cricketing fraternity was shell-shocked with the news and thought that was a belated April Fool’s prank. But when we contacted the franchise; to our utter surprise, the news was absolutely true.
Here is what Goenka had to say:
” We are very excited to have Irfan back in this big team. He has promised us he will not vent his frustration on Twitter even if he does not get the chance to play a single game this time and I think that was enough to give him the deal. Because at the end of the day consistency matters and in his case, I think there are fewer persons who can boast of sitting out more on the bench than him. The guy who has made an image of the perennial bench-sitter will surely add more strength to the bench.”
Stephen Fleming, the head coach, meanwhile, is looking to give Dinda an extended run and wants Irfan to motivate him.
Fleming said:“See, Dinda has been a consistent performer in this league for years. I think IPL will lose its glamour factor if we drop Dinda. For a player, who never shies away from getting hit even by the newcomers, I think Dinda’s courage and indomitable ego should be respected. In my whole career, I have seen plenty of bowlers but none like Dinda. Even after being our worst performer so far, Dinda has always been the first to walk in during the team parties. Not only that, the way he mocked Imran Tahir after one poor game, I think he is the right character to lift the mood of the team after the defeats.
“Dinda is a real class act and even though his bowling is up to shit right now we are confident he will find a way to concede something around 10 runs per over in future matches against the vast array of mediocre batsmen who try to make a name for themselves in this league”
“Talking about Irfan, we bought him only to show that our bench has the quality. We will consider him to include in the playing eleven once our fate in the league is decided. But for the time being, Irfan should look to make full use of this opportunity. We know he is a big selfie addict and we will give him the silence to upload as many selfies as he can,” Fleming added.
When we contacted Pathan after the good news, the so close yet so far ideal all-rounder opened up about his tough times.
“Every other day I’ve had to read some sentimental shit about myself after I went unsold. Nobody understands the game anymore I think, can’t I make a name for myself by just sitting on the bench?
“I know I lack the charisma of Dinda but I am keen to learn from him and perform well against the awful domestic batsmen in coming days,” he said.
” Right now, I have asked my mother to prepare some biriyani for my teammates as it might help me get a game or two this year,” he concluded.