The infamous slap gate between former India cricketers Harbhajan Singh & S Sreesanth hogged the majority of the limelight in the inaugural edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL 2008) season. While its been 18 years since the incident happened, the controversy yet again has resurfaced. IPL founder Lalit Modi released unseen video footage of the slap gate incident, wherein Harbhajan gave a tight slap to KXIP player Sreesanth after the IPL game.
In his podcast with Michael Clarke, Lalit gave details about the whole infamous incident, which led to a sour equation back then between the two players involved. The incident occurred after Kings XI now (Punjab Kings) defeated Mumbai Indians (MI) by a huge margin by 66 runs. Batting first, PBKS posted 182 runs before restricting Mumbai to a total of 116 runs in 20 overs. Both Harbhajan & Sreesanth were impressive for Mumbai & Punjab, respectively. While the off-spinner bagged three wickets, the pacer picked up two wickets.
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Coming back to the slap gate incident, Harbhajan was seen hitting Sreesanth directly on his right cheek. While the concrete reason of the MI player was not revealed back then, ESPNCricinfo has claimed that the MI stand-in-captain did not like the way Sreesanth conducted himself on-field during the second innings of the game.
Harbhajan & Sreesanth have moved on from the slap gate incident
Apart from having a go at MI opener Robin Uthappa, the Punjab pacer was also seen giving fiery send-offs to several MI players after taking their wickets. Thus, when the pacer teased Harbhajan with a cheeky line 'hard luck, the MI off-spinner lost his cool and replied to him with a tight slap.
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While after the incident, Sreesanth cried on live TV, the MI player refused to speak on the matter in the post-match presentation. However, the IPL Governing Council found the off-spinner guilty of breaching the code of conduct and imposed a ban on him for the rest of the IPL 2008 season. Notably, both players have moved on from that infamous incident. In fact, Harbhajan publicly also stated that he is guilty of slapping Sreesanth and has apologized to him.
“One thing I’d want to change in my life is the incident with Sreesanth. I want to remove that incident from my career. That is the incident I would change from my list. What transpired was wrong, and I shouldn’t have done what I did. I apologized 200 times. What I felt so bad about was that even years after that incident, I have been apologizing every opportunity or stage I get. It was a mistake,” said Harbhajan on Kutti Stories with Ash.
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