Cricket is a gentleman’s game. However, slowly the sport has started sledging. It all started with one or two occasional banters now and then to fuel some fire in a five-day match. However, with every passing day sledging has become a part and parcel of cricket it seems.
Here are five instances when the overconfidence of a number of cricketers backfired:
5) Steven Smith against England: On the eve of the 2015 Ashes, Australian cricketer, Steven Smith had remarked that the English cricket team “wouldn’t come close” to them throughout the entire course of the coveted Test series. The ultimate series result, however, ended nowhere near Smith’s prediction. England literally humiliated the Aussies at their backyard defeating them by margins of 169 runs, 8 wickets and an innings and 78 runs in the 1st, 3rd and 4th matches of the series to seal the 2015 Ashes by 3-2.
4) AB de Villiers against England: AB de Villiers couldn’t get a single run on the board against England on three consecutive occasions earlier this year. However, going into the Test series, the 32-year-old had sounded quite confident at the various pre-series press conferences.
“The bowling (of England) is experienced but some of the guys (referring to James Anderson) have lost some pace over the years, but they are smart and skilled so there are other angles to cover,” he told the press. “But they are not unbeatable, there’s no doubt. I’m not only optimistic about this game but our future as well.”
3) Glenn Maxwell against New Zealand: While chasing the Australian total of 151 runs in the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup, the Kiwis were almost on the verge of a collapse and at one stage were tumbling at 146/9 with six more runs to go.
It was the Aussie speedster, Mitchell Starc, who had picked up back-to-back wickets during the penultimate over of the match in order to bring the Kiwi number 11, Trent Boult on the pitch. It was exactly at that point of time when Glenn Maxwell made a gesture to the Kiwi crowd of getting choked. Soon after, Kane Williamson caned Mitchell Marsh for a match-winning over-boundary.
New Zealand went on to win the crucial Group Stage match by 1 wicket.
4) Andrew Flintoff against India: Yuvraj Singh had smashed six sixes off a Stuart Broad over to steer the Indians to the semi-final of the inaugural edition of the ICC World T20 that took place in South Africa back in 2007. And almost every cricket fan knows what fuelled had Yuvraj Singh to take on Broad for that extraordinary feat- a verbal stand-off with Andrew Flintoff in the very previous over.
Later, Yuvraj Singh had gone on to reveal the exact conversation that took place between both of them in an interview with the former Bollywood actress, Simi Garewal. According to Yuvi, “He (Andrew Flintoff) said those were ******* ridiculous shots because I had hit him for two boundaries in that over. I said **** you. Then he said, excuse me. I said you heard what I said. And he said I will cut your throat off. I said you see this bat in my hand. You know where am I gonna hit you with this bat?”
Yuvraj also admitted, “It got me really worked up. I was really angry and I just wanted to hit every ball out of the ground, just give it back. Sometimes, it’s good for you. Sometimes, it backfires. But on that day, I think it backfired them.”
5) Aamir Sohail against India: It was an India versus Pakistan encounter at the quarter-final stage of the 1996 ICC Cricket World Cup. Steered by Navjot Singh Sidhu’s fighting 93 and Ajay Jadeja’s 25-ball 45, the ‘Men in Blue’ had posted a formidable 287 runs on the scoreboard for Pakistan to chase down.
The Pakistani chase had begun with a bang. Both their openers, Aamir Sohail and Saeed Anwar, started playing shots towards almost each and every corner of the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in order to give Pakistan a strong start. While Anwar fell to Javagal Srinath with the score at 84, Aamir Sohail continued to exploit the Indian bowling line-up by scoring his fifty at more than run a ball.
In the process, he had hit a certain Venkatesh Prasad delivery to the boundary and later followed it up by pointing the region to Prasad with his bat as if to say, “Go and fetch it.” Come the very next delivery and Aamir Sohail got comprehensively bowled by Prasad while trying to repeat his previous shot. The tables had turned. This time, a charged up Venkatesh Prasad gave Sohail a send-off as if “Go home, you ******* *****rd.”
In the end, India won the match by 39 runs to advance to the semi-finals of the 1996 ICC Cricket World Cup.