Dominic Thornely Opens up on Harbhajan Singh’s Slapping Incident
Apr 11, 2020 at 4:59 PM
Australian batsman and the former Mumbai Indians (MI) cricketer Dominic Thornely has recently revealed the earlier situation before Harbhajan Singh’s slapping incident to S Sreesanth after a match in the inaugural IPL tournament (IPL 2008).
It was the 10th match of the then-new tournament (IPL 2008) where Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) faced Mumbai Indians (MI) at Punjab Cricket Association IS Bindra Stadium (Mohali, Chandigarh) on 25th April 2008. In that game, Harbhajan Singh was leading the Mumbai franchise while S Sreesanth was representing KXIP. Both were the teammates in the Indian team as they were the regular members of the national team.
While the hosts KXIP scored 182 runs (20 overs) in the first innings of that game after losing the toss, thanks to their wicketkeeper-batsman Kumar Sangakkara‘s 94 runs, MI were restricted to just 116/9 (20 overs). KXIP won that match by 66 runs.
In the 14th over of that chasing, the visiting skipper Harbhajan was dismissed for a golden duck as the left-arm pacer Irfan Pathan trapped him for the lbw. The MI captain Harbhajan was very upset about that big defeat which was noticed by his teammate Dominic Thornely, who was not in the playing XI in that game. Thornely was trying to calm him down in that situation.
According to Sportscafe, Thornely recalled the moment before the controversial incident, “Harbhajan had just got dismissed and was very upset when he came and sat next to me in the dug-out. We were eight-down and about to lose by a big margin. I just told him it was too early in the tournament to get frustrated and that he as captain should remain upbeat. He looked at me and said that’s the right call and we should keep our calm and composure.”
After that slapping incident, Harbhajan Singh was upset later in the hotel: Dominic Thornely
Soon after losing that game, Harbhajan slapped Sreesanth on the field. As Thornely was little behind of that incident, he was surprised at that slapping incident. Harbhajan was upset for that incident who believed that he shouldn’t have done that.
Thornely added, “Lo and behold, 5 minutes later, we’ve lost our last two wickets and the players are shaking hands. There’s a bit of a kerfuffle and the slap happens. I was 4 players behind them. And I was like how did that escalate so quickly? Harbhajan was upset later in the hotel and was like ‘I shouldn’t have done that’.”
It was Mumbai Indians’ third consecutive defeat in that tournament. Though Sreesanth had no complaint against “elder brother like” Harbhajan Singh, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) launched an investigation on that incident. Later, the board banned the MI captain Harbhajan for the remainder of IPL 2008.