A lot was said about, how Irfan Pathan was sacked from the IPL 2025 broadcast team, after he criticised Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, during the Australia Test series in December last year. But now, the lid has been removed from the truth. It seems, it wasn’t the duo, but another senior member of the current team setup, who didn’t like the criticism.
In an interview with the Lallantop, Irfan Pathan revealed, as to what, or rather who was behind the sacking. Talking about the criticism, the former all-rounder also went on to say — that he did not even go the full tilt, with his words. It was none other than Hardik Pandya, who he was talking about.
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Referring to the last year’s season, Irfan said, “If I’m criticising you in 7 matches out of 14, I’m still being lenient. That is our job as broadcaster,” he said. For substantiating his point, the ex-cricketer said that there is no rivalry between him and Pandya, and has always helped all players from Baroda.
“There is no rivalry. All the Baroda players who have come after me — Deepak Hooda, Krunal Pandya or Hardik Pandya — none of them can say that Irfan-Yusuf did not help them.” Further on, the left-armer went on to reveal, how VVS Laxman repented for not picking Hardik for SRH, on his insistence.
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“VVS Laxman admitted on Star Sports, that he was at fault for not listening to me, and not picking Hardik in 2012. If he had picked him then, Hardik would have played for Hyderabad,” he added. There was also a time when the 31-year-old star was called names by the MI supporters, after Rohit Sharma was removed from captaincy. That was when Irfan took a stand and said, nothing bad should be said about the player.
“There is nothing wrong in criticising the player; if you play, you have to go through that. It happened with Sunil Gavaskar, the great Sachin Tendulkar.. they never made anyone feel, they were bigger than the game. But I’m against the derogatory words used against Pandya.”
