Yuzvendra Chahal made a sensation revelation that has forced everyone into a state of shock and also pondering over what could have happened. Speaking in a video for Rajasthan Royals, the senior India leg-spinner said that he was hanged from a 15th-floor hotel balcony by one of his then Mumbai Indians teammates in 2013. Thankfully, others around quickly came in and helped him back.
This alleged physical harassment – the second this year Yuzvendra Chahal recalled such an instance during his early MI days – is a serious concern now for the BCCI and the franchises about how their younger cricketers have been bullied in the past.
This is what Yuzvendra Chahal said in a video that has gone viral on April 7: “This dates back to 2013, when I was with Mumbai Indians. We had a match in Bengaluru and there was a get-together after that. So there was a player who was very drunk – and I won’t take his name – he was very drunk, he just called me aside, and he took me outside and he hung me out from the balcony.
“I was holding on to him, with my arms around his neck. If I had lost my grip, we were on the 15th floor… Suddenly many people who were there came and handled the situation. I kind of fainted, and they gave me water. Then I realised how responsible we need to be when we go anywhere. So that was one incident where I made a narrow escape. Had there been a small mistake there, I would have fallen down.”
Former India opener Virender Sehwag is one of the leading cricketers to have urged the leg-spinner to reveal the identity of the player who put him in a life-endangering situation. Chahal, has so far, not revealed the name.
However, fans are wondering whether Yuzvendra Chahal did a mistake by not letting the BCCI in on this matter years ago then. As seen in the recent case of Wriddhiman Saha – where he was allegedly threatened by a journalist for not giving him an interview – after the uproar on social media, Saha was contacted by the BCCI to reveal the name of the journalist.
Putting someone’s life at risk in the case of Yuzvendra Chahal is an extremely serious offence, and we believe, at that time Chahal should have approached the board. And, as he claimed, there were other people around who saved him, he also had a number of eyewitnesses for this incident.
Yuzvendra Chahal had been part of Mumbai Indians since 2011 and it was in his third year with the franchise that he was treated in such a way by a cricketer. It’s disappointing, shameful and concerning to learn that in a franchise that has often claimed to live like one family, someone’s life was put at risk by a drunken nincompoop and neither the franchise made a public punishment nor the youngster – Chahal was 23 then – was asked to report this to the board.
