S Sreesanth had an aggressive natured an had a tendency to get animated during periods of a game throughout his career. However, Robin Uthappa, who shared the dressing room with Sreesanth in the Indian national team for a few years believes that then-captain MS Dhoni handled him efficiently.
In an episode with comedian Sorabh Pant, Uthappa shared a hilarious incident that took place in a match between India and Australia just after the 2007 World Cup. Apparently, MS had to jog down the pitch in order to ask Sreesanth to focus and get on with the game instead of resorting to other tactics and mind games.
Explaining the incident, Robbie shed light on how Sreesanth stopped his run-up mid-way and tried to dislodge the bails of the non-striker backing up. “It was just after the World Cup, and we were playing Australia in Hyderabad. And I think it was either Andrew Symonds who had backed up. And then Sree (Sreesanth) stopped, took the stumps off and goes ‘How is that? How is that?’ So MS came running from there, pulled him and said ‘just go bowl bro’,” Uthappa said on a recent episode of YouTube show ‘Wake Up With Sorabh’.
“Someone who actually handled him really well was MS,” added Uthappa.
The former India batsman also talked about his emotions and how he felt playing in the final of the inaugural T20 World Cup against Pakistan.
Pakistan came close to snatching a victory but were left undone in the final over Misbah-ul-Haq lifted the ball in the air while trying an unconventional shot off Joginder Sharma. Sreesanth, standing at short-fine leg ran a lot of ground and ended up taking a clean catch, giving India the all-important victory in the final!
Uthappa mentioned that while the ball was in the air, he was praying for Sreesanth to take the catch as he didn’t want the Indian side to lose the final against Pakistan. “I was standing at long-on. So many things happened during that match. When that ball went in the air, my first thought was ‘ok, who is at short fine leg?’. And when I saw it’s Sree, I started sprinting and I was praying ‘Please pull us through.’ Because again, you don’t lose a World Cup final to Pakistan. There’s just something that we always get the better of them in a World Cup,” said Uthappa.
