The Indian Premier competition (IPL) has grown to be cricket’s richest competition, but one infamous incident from its initial season in 2008 has long dominated headlines. In a heated altercation during a match between the Mumbai Indians and Kings XI Punjab (now the Punjab Kings), MI captain Harbhajan Singh smacked Punjab pacer S Sreesanth. This incident became notoriously known as “Slapgate.”
For years, only snippets of the incident were shown, with the raw material never making it onto the live broadcast. Lalit Modi, the former chairman and founder of the Indian Premier League, has now made the hidden footage public for the first time. Modi revealed the uncut video of the brawl that rocked the league in its infancy during an interview with Michael Clarke, the captain of Australia that won the World Cup.
“The game was over, cameras were shut off. One of my security cameras was on. It caught the incident between Sreesanth and Bhajji (Harbhajan), and Bhajji just gives him a back-hander. Here’s the video. I hadn’t put it out for so long. We have 18 years behind us for this,” said Lalit on Beyond23 Cricket Podcast.
Harbhajan Singh admits he wants to erase slapgate controversy from his career
Harbhajan Singh has just come out to talk about the slapgate incident saying that he was extremely sorry that he did what he did after eighteen years when it happened. The ex India off-spinner admitted that the altercation with Sreesanth would be the incidence of his career that he would surely wish to forget.
“One thing I’d want to change in my life is that incident with Sreesanth. I want to remove that incident from my career. That is the incident I would change from my list. What transpired was wrong and I shouldn’t have done what I did. I apologised 200 times. What I felt so bad was even years after that incident, I have been apologising every opportunity or stage I get. It was a mistake,” Harbhajan had said on R Ashwin’s YouTube show Kutti Stories.
“What hurt me even after many years was when I met his daughter and I was talking to her with a lot of love and she said, ‘I don’t want to talk to you. You hit my father.’ My heart was shattered and I was on the verge of tears. I was asking myself what is the impression I’ve left on her? She must be thinking of me in a poor light, right? She sees me as the guy who hit her father. I felt so bad. I still apologise to his daughter.”
Harbhajan Singh
