Cricket is a team game and most of the time; the international cricketers keep their personal interests aside and play for the team.
However, there have been a few instances in the past where the cricketers turned a little selfish and thought about themselves first, before the team.
Here are 4 such instances –
#1 Sachin Tendulkar’s disappointment over not getting a double hundred:
This is an instance from the famous Multan Test of 2004 where Virender Sehwag scored the first ever triple hundred for India in Test match cricket.
However, in that Test match, the master blaster Sachin Tendulkar also played a wonderful knock and was closing in on a double hundred when India’s stand-in captain Rahul Dravid suddenly decided to declare India’s innings.
Dravid’s decision definitely had some logic as he thought India had enough runs on the board and he wanted to have a crack at the Pakistani openers in the last few overs of day 2.
However, Tendulkar was not very happy with the decision as he thought it was only day 2 of the Test and not day 4 that the captain had to show such urgency.
“I was shocked as it did not make any sense. It was day 2 of the Test match and not day 4, as it had been in Sydney, a month earlier,” Sachin was quoted as saying.
#2 Sunil Gavaskar batted with a strike rate of 20 in an ODI:
In one of the games of the ODI World Cup 1975, India were chasing a score of over 300 against England, but Sunil Gavaskar deliberately batted very slowly and remained unbeaten till the end of the innings having scored just 36 runs off 174 balls.
India couldn’t even score half of England’s total and lost the game by a massive margin.
It was believed that Gavaskar played in that manner because he wanted to send a message across that Test cricket was the best version of the game.
#3 Trevor Chappell’s Underarm bowling in World Series:
In one of the games of the Benson & Hedges World Series of 1981, New Zealand needed 7 runs off the last ball of the game to emerge victorious, while they needed 6 runs to tie. The Australian captain Greg Chappell, at that stage, decided to ask his bowler to do something weird.
Greg asked Trevor Chappell, who was the bowler, to bowl the last delivery underarm so that the batsmen couldn’t get under the ball and loft it over the fence.
Greg told the umpires as well that his bowler was going to bowl underarm and the umpires couldn’t stop him because bowling overarm was not mandatory in the rules of the World Series.
#4 Jacques Kallis’ slow innings in World Cup 2007:
In a very crucial game of the ODI World Cup 2007 between Australia and South Africa, Australia batted first and posted 337 runs on the board.
South Africa, in response to that, needed a quickfire start and their openers provided that as the Proteas raced to 160 runs in just 20 overs.
But, Jacques Kallis, who came out to bat at the fall of the first wicket, did exact opposite of what was required and rather than looking to strike the ball at a brisk rate, he took his own sweet time and scored just 48 runs off 63 balls.
That slow knock of Kallis took the momentum out of the South African innings as they lost the game eventually.
