Indian legend Harbhajan Singh opened up on the hilarious April Fool’s prank he and other teammates pulled on former captain Sourav Ganguly. The incident occurred in 2005 when the team was in the middle of a tour.
In an interview with Sports Now Hindi, Harbhajan revealed how he, Yuvraj Singh, and other teammates, with the help of seniors, pranked Sourav Ganguly, which almost led to the former skipper quitting captaincy. They created a fake newspaper clipping in which Ganguly called out some players and criticised them.
Harbhajan added that they had informed the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid about the prank, and that the two also joined in.
“We created this drama when the whole team was there. We thought of making him an April Fool. Yuvi started it by asking Ganguly why he said things like Yuvraj keeps partying, Harbhajan does not care about anything, Nehra is lost in his own world, Zaheer also keeps partying. Ganguly asked when he said all this. So we showed the paper cuttings that we had made. We had also spoken to the seniors. Sachin said, ‘If you had done this, this is wrong’. Rahul Dravid also said, ‘Dada, this is not done yaar’. When two seniors said it, he [Ganguly] said he would quit captaincy if he had really done it,” he recalled.
“We just took our bags and walked out. He ran behind us and asked us to stop, saying there was a match to play tomorrow. We did fool him, but later we thought we had done it to an innocent guy. If it was any other captain, he would have sent us home for real,” he added.
Harbhajan went on to reveal how the prank would have been busted, as a few could not carry on for long, but Sourav Ganguly was already running behind others by then who pretended to be leaving the dressing room. The Indian legend also added that then-coach John Wright was informed to stay out of it and was left waiting helplessly.
“Someone must have laughed midway through the prank because you can’t stick to such a thing for long. We were in the acting zone. But someone who was just watching tried to break the truth. By then, Ganguly was running behind, as a few players started leaving. One more thing we did well was that we told John Wright to stay out of it, as it was an internal thing within the team. He was waiting outside for the team to come and start practice. He kept on waiting while the drama was going on inside.”
After offering to resign as captain and reacting intensely, Sourav Ganguly was eventually told by his teammates that it was an April Fools’ Day prank.
Harbhajan Singh responds to getting behind Sourav Ganguly on being dropped
In the same interview, Harbhajan Singh was also told that Sourav Ganguly mentioned the Indian legend getting behind him for being dropped from the team. The veteran spinner responded by saying he would questions as opportunities to play were not a lot initially.
However, he also expressed gratitude for having a captain like Sourav Ganguly, who made the players feel like family and not just teammates.
“We used to not get opportunities to play. So we used to ask him. It is important to ask that question. If you get an answer, at least you are satisfied. But when you don’t get that answer, you must be patient and not get on the captain’s nerves at that time. We made a lot of mistakes, were upset and did not even talk to the captain for so many days. But I am so glad that we had a captain like Ganguly who understood that we were not just teammates but also like brothers. So I learnt a lot from that dressing room,” he stated.
Ganguly and Harbhajan both established themselves among the greats to have embraced the game, making significant contributions to Indian cricket.
Edited by Rishab Vm