It was way back in 2008 when the infamous slapgate took place in the inaugural season of the Indian Premier League. It was Harbhajan Singh of the Mumbai Indians who slapped Kings XI Punjab (Now renamed as Punjab Kings) player S.Sreesanth. Harbhajan, over the years, expressed his regret over the incident and also mentioned how bad he felt when Sreesanth’s daughter refused to greet the Indian off-spinner because of the same. However, recently, Lalit Modi, who was the chairman at the time of the league, in an interview with former Australian cricketer Michael Clarke, released a video of the incident. Harbhajan accused Modi of “selfish motive,” and Sreesanth’s wife Bhuvneshwari chimed in, saying it was “heartless and inhuman.”
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Former Indian cricketer Robin Uthappa gave his view on the matter. “That whole Slapgate thing that happened in the IPL. What the f*** man? How does someone get away with stuff like that?” Uthappa said on the Kim-Appa show with Jarrod Kimber. “Now, imagine we put up a clip of something that an Australian did that was offensive, that was kept under wraps for the respect of that whole situation, to save the respect of that situation, which is an impulsive, bad decision that a human being made… Now that you have gone and interviewed someone, and you have got access to the file, do you think you have the right to publish it, put that into the world, and make those two people go through that whole emotion, that raw emotion, 20 years later?”
“Where is your sense of sensitivity and empathy for other people?” Uthappa asked. “We all make mistakes, but are we going to keep putting it out there to make people go through the embarrassment of the wrong choices the person has made? For me, it’s guys who aren’t brown skinned who get away with it a lot more. Today, we are speaking about Sunny G having an opinion on what other countries speak about Indian cricket. But what about this? Imagine the human implications of this… You can’t treat people like crap just because it’ll get you more views,” he added.
