Shoaib Akhtar has always had a fire and ice kind of relationship with Indian players. Ever since his playing days, he is famed for his aggressive approach and on field arguments with players like Harbhajan Singh and Virendra Sehwag. So much so was his on field antics that he managed to get ice cool Rahul Dravid also riled up and aggressive. After announcing his retirement, Akhtar worked a lot in India for cricket assignments and developed a friendship with many players.
Akhtar recently remembered incidents where he wrestled with Indian players Harbhajan Singh and Indian southpaw Yuvraj Singh. Akhtar claimed that while wrestling jokingly he sometimes ended up injuring his counterparts and sometimes his teammates.
“I don’t wrestle, it’s my way of showing my affection to other people and I basically crossed the line. When I like someone, I throw them.”
“I broke Yuvraj’s back, have previously broken Shahid Afridi’s rib by hugging him, and I made Abdul Razzaq stretch his hamstring a bit too much. So my way of loving people is a bit wild. It was just me being stupid in my younger days but I never realised my own power,” he said on BBC’s Doosra podcast.
Other than being famed for his speed, thereby giving a nickname of Rawalpindi Express, Shoaib Akhtar is also known for his controversial statements landing him in a soup. Very recently, he discussed his first face-off against Sachin Tendulkar during the 1999 Kolkata test.
“I heard Sachin was the god. I said this is a god? Iss ki khairiyat nahi. He didn’t recognise me, and I didn’t recognise him. He was in his own attitude and I was in my attitude. But I wanted to get him out on the first ball and that happened,” Akhtar told Pakistani news channel ARY News in an interview.
