The 25-year-old Indian left-arm spinner Kuldeep Yadav has recently revealed his scary moment when the former Indian World Cup-winning captain MS Dhoni scolded him on the field during a match.
Apart from being one of the greatest batsmen along with successful finishing skills, a smart wicketkeeper, a successful leader, MS Dhoni is also famous for his cool brain. Even in the many tough times, Dhoni’s calm brain has helped his team to handle the situation outstandingly and achieve success. Cool Dhoni hardly shows his anger, especially on the cricket field. Only a few times, Dhoni showed his anger to his fellow players and Kuldeep Yadav recently shared one of those incidents.
It was Indore T20I between India and Sri Lanka on 22nd December 2017. In that entire series, Rohit Sharma led the Indian team in the absence of regular captain Virat Kohli, who was unavailable at that time due to his marriage.
After Sri Lanka sent the hosts to bat first, the Indian openers provided a firing start (165 runs partnership between Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul) and India managed to score the whopping 260/5 (20 overs) in the first innings. In that innings, skipper Rohit (118) hit the joint-fastest T20I century.
In reply, the Sri Lankan top-order batsmen were also dominating as the Sri Lankan no.3 batsman Kusal Perera was punishing the Indian spinners. At one moment of that second innings, Kuldeep didn’t follow Dhoni’s suggestion and Kusal hit him for a four in the next ball which made Dhoni very angry.
“Me pagal hu? 300 one-day khela hu, aur samjha raha hu yahan pe.”: angry MS Dhoni scolded Kuldeep Yadav
Recently, during a talk show with Jatin Sapru in ‘ASAP with JSAP’, Kuldeep recalled the memory of that game where he got very scared.
Kuldeep said, “Kusal smashed a boundary over the covers. Dhoni Bhai shouted from behind the wickets and asked me to change the fielding. I did not listen to his suggestion and in the next ball, Kusal hit another boundary through the reverse sweep now.
“Now agitated Dhoni came to me and said, ‘me pagal hu? 300 one-day khela hu, aur samjha raha hu yahan pe.’ (Am I stupid? I have played 300 ODIs and you are not listening to me).”
In his first three overs of that match, Kuldeep conceded 45 runs and didn’t manage to take a wicket. But in his last over, he not only dismissed Kusal Perera (77) but also took two more wickets in that over. Kuldeep finished that game with the bowling figures of 4-0-52-3.
Kuldeep continued, “I was so scared of him that day. After the match, I went to him while travelling on the team bus and asked if he ever gets angry. To which Dhoni bhai said: 20 saal se gussa nhi kiya hai (I have not got angry for the last 20 years).”
Sri Lankan middle and lower batting were collapsed at the late of that innings as India bowled out Sri Lanka for 172 runs and the hosts won that match by 88 runs.