‘Was dangled from a 15th floor balcony by a drunk player’

KOLKATA: In a revelation that raises serious questions on what goes behind the scenes during the Indian Premier League (IPL), India spinner Yuzvendra Chahal has said a drunk player had dangled him from the balcony of a 15th floor hotel in 2013 during his time with the Mumbai Indians.

This is the second time this year that Chahal has revealed he was physically abused at Mumbai Indians, the previous incident involving James Franklin and Andrew Symonds who had tied him, taped his mouth, left him in a room and forgot about him for the rest of the night.

“My story, some people know about. I have never spoken about this, I never shared this. This dates back to 2013, when I was with Mumbai Indians,” Chahal says in a video published by Rajasthan Royals where he is speaking to R Ashwin about tackling tricky off-field situations. “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 just called me aside, and he took me outside and he dangled 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.”

In a similar podcast with his earlier team Royal Challengers Bangalore last February, Chahal had shared how he was left to fend for himself against Franklin and Symonds. “It happened in 2011 when Mumbai Indians won the Champions League. Andrew Symonds drank a lot of “fruit juice” during a party. He tied my hands and James Franklin tied my legs. The task for me was to open it. But then, they forgot that they had put a tape on my mouth. The next morning, a cleaner came and saw me and got me out,” said Chahal.

According to Chahal, Symonds and Franklin never apologised for that incident. “They said when you drink so much juice you don’t remember stuff in the morning,” he said.

AP Yuzvendra Chahal.