MUMBAI (Reuters) – Former India coach Ravi Shastri said a life ban would be appropriate for behaviour like that of a Mumbai Indians player who allegedly dangled teammate Yuzvendra Chahal from a 15th floor hotel balcony during the 2013 Indian Premier League.
India leg-spinner Chahal, who now plays for Rajasthan Royals in the world’s richest annual Twenty20 tournament, said in a video published on Thursday that he fainted after the physical harassment by his unnamed, “drunk” teammate.
Former India all-rounder Shastri, who was in charge of the men’s national team from mid-2017 until last year’s T20 World Cup, said the incident was “not acceptable”.
“Someone’s life at risk. People might think it is funny but for me it’s not funny at all,” Shastri told the ESPNcricinfo website on Friday. “It shows the person who is trying to do it is in a state … which is not appropriate.
“If it happens today, life ban for that person involved … send him to a rehab centre as quickly as possible. Let him not come near a cricket field again.”
The IPL and the Mumbai Indians franchise did not respond to requests for comment.
Former India opening batter Virender Sehwag asked Chahal to reveal the name of the player, saying in a tweet that it was “important to know what happened and what action was taken considering the seriousness of this”.
The 31-year-old Chahal, who has represented India in 115 white-ball matches, was bought by the Rajasthan team ahead of this year’s IPL. He was with Mumbai for three seasons from 2011 before joining the Royal Challengers Bangalore in 2014.
Speaking to fellow spinner Ravichandran Ashwin in a Rajasthan Royals video, Chahal spoke about the 2013 incident.
“We had a match in Bengaluru and there was a get-together after that,” he said. “So there was a player who was very drunk – and I won’t take his name – 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.
“So that was one incident where I made a narrow escape. Had there been a small mistake there, I would have fallen down.”
Earlier this year in a podcast published by his former team Bangalore, Chahal spoke about an incident from 2011 when two of his Mumbai teammates tied him up, taped his mouth, forgot about him and left him in a room for an entire night after a party.
(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly; Editing by William Mallard)
