The veteran and one of the best allrounder Irfan Pathan announced retirement from all forms of cricket on Saturday. Soon after his retirement from the international cricket, Irfan recalled some good and the bad memories from his cricketing days. He recalls one incident with the former Sri Lankan cricketer Kumar Sangakkara during a Test in Delhi.
Irfan Pathan recalled an incident with the former Sri Lankan wicketkeeper-batsman, Sangakkara. He said that he remembers the two exchanging some heated conversations with each other while India was batting on the crease.
Irfan narrates the incident with Sangakkara during Test in 2005:
He narrated the incident from the second Test of the series in 2005 at the Feroz Shah Kotla ground. The prominent seam and swing bowler was asked to open the game for India in their second innings as Virender Sehwag was out due to injury. Irfan justified that decision by scoring 93 runs for the hosts who defeated Sri Lanka by 188 runs.
However, as the tradition goes on in cricket, Sangakkara said some things to rile up Irfan while he was at the peak and scoring big runs. The bowling allrounder who was sent up in the order did not slow down and replied to the opposing team member with matching intensity.
“I remember one of the stories with (Kumar) Sangakkara. We were playing in Delhi. I scored about 93 in the 2nd innings when (Virender) Sehwag got injured. I was sent up the order. At that time, Sangakkara knew the match was going away from them. (Muttiah) Muralitharan was bowling really well. He was just trying to tell me something very nasty,” recalled Irfan Pathan.
As sledging is a very common practice in this sports where the cricketers say nasty stuff to each other, the two of them said somethings on a personal level. It was certainly not a merry moment for either of them, and so both Irfan and Sangakkara were unhappy with each other, back then.
“He said something personal, I said something personal to him. I said something about his wife, he said something about my father and my mother. At that time, we were not happy with each other,” Pathan said on Star Sports.
IPL sets up Irfan and Sangakkara to be friends forever:
However, Irfan further told that the cash-rich Indian Premier League brought the two cricketers close enough to become pals from the foes they were. The two were playing in same Punjab based IPL franchise, Kings XI Punjab. Recalling the time from then, Irfan said he would change his path as soon as Sangakkara’s wife would come in and it went on for around a month till Sri Lankan cricketer stepped in.
“After some time, we were playing in the same team for Kings XI Punjab. I remember, for a month, as soon as his wife used to come on the right, I used to go left. One day, Sangakkara came and said… ‘you remember this guy, he is the guy who said something about you’. I said sorry. And then Sangakkara explained, I said something first and then only he said something about you. It ended that way. There is no hard feeling and then we became friends,” Pathan revealed.
The now-former Indian cricketer had been a part of 40 innings of the Test in his cricket career that took off early when he was just 19-year-old. However, Irfan could not continue his journey in the red-ball game and was out of the Test side after 2008.
Nevertheless, Irfan gave India cricket team the much-needed pace-bowling all-rounder after Kapil Dev. He got featured for most of the IPL franchises while he spent the first three years of his IPL career with KXIP. Irfan featured in 103 IPL matches where he plucked 80 wickets pairing with a total of 1,139 runs. In the meantime, the prominent pacer of India had 100 wickets in Test career, 173 in ODI cricket and 28 in T20I career.