The prank was meant to trigger a few laughs, but the drama became so intense that a battle-hardened India captain offered to resign in a state of complete panic. The burden of expectations was, as usual, heavy, and Yuvraj Singh , along with Harbhajan Singh, decided that pranking then-skipper Sourav Ganguly would be the perfect way to lighten the mood in the dressing room. It was April Fool’s Day in 2005, which was also the training day before the start of a one-day series against familiar and bitter rivals Pakistan in Kochi.
However, the six-match series was an overall disappointment, as India lost momentum after winning the first two games and eventually went down 2-4.
“Puri team baithi hui thi (the entire team was sitting) when we created this drama and decided that we would make an April Fool of Dada. Yuvi started it: ‘Dada, what is this statement that you have given to the press? “…we had already spoken to the seniors about this. “Poor Dada was the kind of captain whom we could fool that day, but later we felt, ‘Yaar, we’ve really put this decent man through it.
Then we showed those clippings to him and said, ‘What is this?'” said the 46-year-old.
He told him that you had called Yuvi a party animal, Harbhajan ko kisi ki padi nahi hai, Ashish Nehra is also in his own world, and Zaheer Khan also parties a lot,” Harbhajan recalled in a podcast interview with PTI. “Dada said, ‘When did I say this? I told Paaji (Tendulkar), ‘Paaji, you tell him. And he said to Dada, ‘If you have done this, this is wrong. Rahul Dravid was also playing along, so he said, ‘Dada, this is not done, yaar. When two senior players said that, Dada thought this must be genuine. If it had been some other captain, he would genuinely have made us pick up our bags and told us, ‘Get out of here and go home. After all, it was a high-voltage home series against Pakistan, and Harbhajan had specifically told him to stay away from “the internal matter of the team” just this one time.
