In the world of sports, teams – be it a club or the national team – are most often depicted as either the best of friends or the happiest of families by many people. Needless to say, teams themselves like to portray this image of themselves as well. But what is often not talked about is the fact that all teams at some point or the other have conflicts among their players. Friction is a given in any team sports, and it is only natural for players to disagree on certain things. That being said, cricket in India is not an exception.
Ever since the dawn of cricket in the country, Indian cricketers have not always had the best of relations with each other. The Indian national cricket team played its first Test series in the year 1932, and since then, teammates have often had tiffs with each other. The issues that sparked these tiffs are varied and diverse, ranging from the attitudes’ of individual players, to more bitter rivalries to fighting over who should get to be the captain. Given the intensity with which cricket is adored across the country, passions tend to run quite high. Fantasy cricket too has taken the cricketing world by storm and it is thrilling to see how real world events in cricket affect the workings of fantasy cricket.
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Of course, even the most notable of Indian cricketers have had their fair share of fights and disagreements, with many of them being feuds that became all too public. In this blog, we take a look at some of them from over the years.
1) Lala Amarnath and the Maharaja of Vizianagaram:
Not known to many, but in the year 1936, more than a decade before India became an independent country, the then legendary cricketer Lala Amarnath had a tiff with a member of royalty – the Maharaja of the Vizianagaram kingdom. The Maharaja, known more popularly as ‘Vizzy’ was the second ever Test captain the Indian team ever had, but his getting the job as a result of backroom lobbying rather than on his own cricketing merit made his appointment farcical, and this spread to India’s tour of England that year.
India was down 1-0 when they reached Oval for the third and final test match.
The tour was a mess due to the captain, The Maharaja of Vizianagaram who had earlier banished Lala Amarnath (arguably India's best allrounder at that time) back to India on disciplinary grounds. pic.twitter.com/t3UAbFRCra
— Sourav Sinha (@sourav_sinha) August 31, 2021
Lala Amarnath, who was one of the best cricketers in the country at the time, did not respect him, along with several other senior cricketers. During a game, Vizzy informed Amarnath to be ready to bat, but did not send him in. Vizzy had a finger injury at the time, and he could not tend to it, and when it was his turn to bat, he got knocked out cheaply. Subsequently, in the dressing room, Amarnath confronted Vizzy, saying he knew what was going on, which Vizzy took as a personal insult. Soon enough, Amarnath was sent back to India, ahead of the first Test match.
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2) Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Virender Sehwag:
Two icons of Indian cricket – one was arguably the greatest opener Indian Test cricket ever had as well as one of the best batsmen, while the other is the most successful captain the Indian team ever had. However, Virender Sehwag and Mahendra Singh Dhoni didn’t quite seem to get on well with each other.
In the year 2012, during the tri-series in Australia, Dhoni had decided that one of the three top-order batsmen at the time, namely Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir, would be rested, explaining that he needed to take such a decision since they were all slow movers on the field and therefore it would not be possible to play them together. At the next match, Sehwag took a fantastic catch and said, “Did you see my catch? We are same for the last 10 years. Nothing has changed.” Dhoni refused to get drawn into any arguments, however Sehwag eventually got excluded from the team.
3) Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid:
Two of India’s finest batsmen had a nasty tiff that pretty much every cricket fan talks about to this day. In fact, Sachin Tendulkar himself discussed this fight in his autobiography. Rahul Dravid was standing in for Sourav Ganguly, who was injured at the time, during the first Test match against Pakistan in Multan. Dravid was the captain, and on the second day, made one of the most infamous decisions in the history of Indian cricket.
He declared with Sachin Tendulkar stuck on 194 not out. It seemed that Dravid had made the declaration after giving sufficient warnings to Tendulkar, but Tendulkar has always held that the declaration was made two overs earlier than what was promised. However, over the years, Dravid did not speak too much about it, and Tendulkar has always maintained that the two of them remained friends.
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4) Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar:
Ever since he made his unforgettable debut in the year 1971, Sunil Gavaskar had grown to become the biggest star of Indian cricket. In 1978, Indian cricket received its next star player when Kapil Dev made his debut. However, relations between Kapil and Sunil began to sour after a few years when Kapil Dev was made the captain instead of Sunil Gavaskar in the year 1983 after a tour of Pakistan where India fared poorly. The captaincy was swapped in the middle of the 1980s, but on-field happenings did not make things any better. Sunil Gavaskar wasn’t pleased with Kapil Dev declaring the innings with Sunil batting at 236 in Madras in 1983, and this left their relations strained.
In 1984, Kapil Dev was dropped from the team after having played an attacking shot that had cost him his wicket and India the Test match against England, and this worsened their relations. Kapil believed Sunil had a role in this while Sunil wrote in his book that he was not even at the selection committee meeting. The BCCI president had to call a meeting so that the two players would make a truce with each other. However, the two players have since held that things were not as bad as the media had made it look.
5) Mohammad Azharuddin and Sachin Tendulkar:
Mohammad Azharuddin was the best batsman in the Indian team when Sachin Tendulkar made his cricketing debut in the year 1989. However, instead of getting on well with each other, the relations between the two began souring in 1996. India’s astounding elimination from the 1996 World Cup as well as a dismal tour of England led to Tendulkar replacing Azharuddin as the captain, and since then things have never been the same between them. Sachin Tendulkar believed that Azhar did not put in effort while he batted and was apprehensive that he was trying to sabotage India’s performance.
Sixteen-year-old Sachin Tendulkar flanked by Kapil Dev and Mohammad Azharuddin in Lahore during India's tour of Pakistan in late 1989. Tendulkar made his Test debut in Karachi and in the four-Test series scored 215 runs at 35.83. All the Tests were drawn pic.twitter.com/cnp0riOcwH
— Historic Cricket Pictures (@PictureSporting) September 2, 2019
Eventually, Tendulkar lost the captain’s spot to Azhar in 1998, but became the captain again a year afterwards following India’s exit from the 1999 World Cup. Subsequently, Tendulkar did not even include Azhar in the team and also refused to allow him into the team for the difficult tour of Australia. In the year 2000, there was a match fixing scandal, and in his testimony to the CBI, Sachin Tendulkar said that he suspected Azhar was hand-in-glove with bookies and had not been putting in effort in matches. Azhar was banned by the BCCI and he never played for the country again.
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