Rajasthan Royals wristspinner Yuzvendra Chahal recalled a story back in 2013 when he was a newcomer to the Indian Premier League. Speaking on RR’s YouTube channel, the 31-year-old claimed he was dangled from the 15th floor of a hotel balcony by a fellow Mumbai Indians player, who was intoxicated.
Speaking to teammates Ravichandran Ashwin and Karun Nair in an interaction where each of them had to talk about dealing with one tricky off-field episode, Chahal recounted inappropriate behaviour from this unnamed player, who was part of the Mumbai Indians squad that season.
“This dates back to 2013, when I was with Mumbai Indians. We had a match in Bengaluru and there was a get-together after that.
So there was a player who was very drunk – and I won’t take his name – he was very drunk, he just called me aside, and he took me outside and he hung me out from the balcony.
I was holding on to him, with my arms around his neck. If I had lost my grip, we were on the 15th floor… Suddenly many people who were there came and handled the situation. I kind of fainted, and they gave me water,”
the player revealed.
Chahal, who would have obviously been livid at the behaviour of that unnamed player, said his biggest lesson from the incident was not to replicate such conduct himself ever and be as responsible a person and professional as he could be.
“Then I realised how responsible we need to be when we go anywhere. So that was one incident where I made a narrow escape. Had there been a small mistake there, I would have fallen down,”
said the 31-year-old, now an experienced India and Indian Premier League cricketer.
Notably, this is the second such story Chahal had brought to public light this year from the early days of his Premier League career. The first one dates back to late 2011 when during the Champions League T20 for Mumbai Indians, he was tied-up teammates James Franklin and Andrew Symonds, who taped his mouth and locked him in a room, from which the player only came out the next day.
The revelation was made in a podcast Chahal recorded for the Royal Challengers Bangalore in February. The cricketer said the incident took place in Chennai after Symonds and Franklin had a lot of “fruit juice” at a party. The way Chahal instantly laughed at the point of mentioning “fruit juice” indicated MI’s overseas duo may have indulged in alcohol before misbehaving with the then 20-year-old.
What Symonds and Franklin presumed to be fun was actually poor behaviour as the duo got drunk and left a youngster tied with his mouth taped in a room alone and came back to check on him only the next day, a span of time in which a lot could have gone wrong.
“They were so lost that they taped my mouth and forgot about me completely during the party. Then they all left and, in the morning, someone came to clean [the room] and saw me, and called a few others and untied me.
They asked me since when I had been there, and I said, ‘I’ve been here the whole night’.”
Chahal had said.
However, former Australia international Symonds happens to be Chahal’s close friend today, an evolved relationship that the spinner himself highlighted during an interview on the famous YouTube show ‘Breakfast with Champions’ hosted by actor and presenter Gaurav Kapur.
