‘He didn’t speak to me for 2-3 years’ – Robin Uthappa on his sledging incident with Matthew Hayden in 2007

Robin Uthappa, the veteran Indian cricketer, has revealed an incident when Matthew Hayden didn’t speak to him for two to three years. Uthappa said that the former Australian cricketer was his inspiration, but he decided to get under the skins of the big man. Going down the memory lane, Robin recalled a series of games in 2007 when there was a lot of sledging when the teams faced.

It was the same year when the Men in Blue, led by MS Dhoni, defeated the Aussies in the semi-final of the T20 World Cup in South Africa. The two teams also locked horns in a seven-match ODI series and a one-off T20I in the same year.

Uthappa told how things turned ugly from the game at the Kingsmead in Durban. Uthappa made the revelations while speaking to stand-up comedian Sorabh Pant on his YouTube show ‘Wake Up with Sorabh’.

He would be very cold-shouldered to me: Robin Uthappa

“In that game, Gauti (Gautam Gambhir) gave it back. I gave it back to Andrew Symonds, Mitchell Johnson, Brad Haddin. The toughest one that I encountered in that game was Matthew Hayden. He inspired me as a person and batsman,” Uthappa told.

“I remember Haydos was batting and in that game, he was going at me and that is when I decided, ‘Ok, I’m going to give it back’. So, when they came to bat, I was giving it. And it got to Haydos at a point, while he was batting,” he stated.

Uthappa said how in the heat of the moment, the duo was involved in a heated altercation after which Hayden didn’t speak to him for the next few years.

“He said something to me which I’m not going to repeat and I said something back to him. He did not speak to me for 2-3 years. He would be very cold-shouldered to me. And it hurt. I wanted to win and make them feel as uncomfortable as possible, and I did that. We won but I missed out on interacting with someone who truly inspired me,” Uthappa added.

Uthappa also quipped how despite the heated moments, he enjoyed playing the game and called it a ‘great’ phase in his career. In 46 ODIs and 13 T20Is, the right-hander scored 934 and 249 runs respectively with seven half-centuries to show for his efforts.