The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : "Ganguly had sought Wright's apology"

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 16, 2006

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Sport - Cricket

"Ganguly had sought Wright's apology"

New Delhi: A sobbing Virender Sehwag, an incensed Indian team and an angry skipper Sourav Ganguly demanding an apology from the coach John Wright.

This was the tension-filled scene in the Indian dressing room at the Oval in 2002 after Wright had held Sehwag by the collar and ``barked'' at him for throwing away his wicket in a NatWest Trophy match against Sri Lanka in England.

The former New Zealand skipper has gone public with this sensational incident in his just-published book Indian Summers and more details of what happened emerged on Tuesday from the then manager of the Indian team Rajiv Shukla and now a senior office-bearer of the Cricket Board.

Asked about Wright's revelation, a reluctant Shukla said in an interview here that he had kept the incident under wraps all these years because what happened inside dressing rooms was not supposed to be divulged. However, it was Wright who spilled the beans, he said.

Shukla said: ``we were sitting in the balcony outside the dressing room at the Oval. Sehwag had just got out and gone into the dressing room. Suddenly an agitated captain Ganguly came out from the room and complained to me that the coach had slapped Sehwag who was sobbing.

``I rushed to the dressing room and found that Sehwag was indeed sobbing. He told me that Wright had pushed him. I patted him and controlled him,'' Shukla said.

Next, the manager started looking for the coach.

``He was not in the dressing room but after some effort I found him in a small room adjacent to it. He was all by himself, tensed up and smoking as he usually did whenever he was in tension,'' he said.

Shukla said he had told Wright that he should not have treated Sehwag in this manner and that the opening batsman was justifiably upset.

``Wright immediately accepted his mistake. My own view is that the coach wanted Sehwag to score more runs and when the batsman had got out he could not control his anger because of which he had got hold of Sehwag's collar and pushed him." — PTI

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