Mark Wood's IPL career includes only five games across two teams.
Speaking on a BBC podcast, Wood spilled beans on the incident from a season where he had fallen seriously ill after playing a handful of games. He revealed the team management and franchise owner were desperate for his availability for a match scheduled three days later.
Despite Wood stating that he was still too sick, the owner continuously followed up and even arranged two more doctors to administer medicines in a bid to get him fit.
When the fast bowler insisted he was too unwell to play, the owner made an extraordinary “private plane” pitch.
Here’s the story Mark Wood shared:
“I’ll give you a story which wasn’t fun. I wasn’t very well. After about five games, I’d picked up an illness there, and the next game was about three days’ time.
So every half an hour, the doctor who had stayed back would come to my room, take my vitals, and try to get me right.
I remember one day, the IPL team owner was ringing me and he was like, ‘How are we feeling? Are we ready to go?’
I was like, ‘Honestly, I’ve ate and drank nothing. I can’t get out of bed still. I’m hoping that, you know, if I can think’
And he was like, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll get another doctor. We’ll give you this, we’ll do that, we’ll do that.’
So I’ve got these three doctors in my room, giving me tablets, trying to help me.
Next day, he’s like, ‘How are we feeling? What’s the update again? How are you feeling?’
I was like, ‘Honestly, I’m still not good. I haven’t had anything.’
And he was like, ‘But I’ll tell you what, I will send a private plane. You get on the plane, play the game, I’ll get the plane straight back out, and you can get back to your bedside.’
So I rang my dad and I was like, ‘Dad, they’re going to send a private plane.’
He was like, ‘Yeah, but how do you feel?’
I was like, ‘Honestly, if I stand up, I feel not well. I could, you know, faint.’
He was like, ‘You’re not right.’
But I was like, ‘Dad, it’s a private plane’ (laughs).
So I didn’t go. But for that split second, I was like, ‘This is the coolest thing that’s probably ever happened to me in my life. This is unbelievable.’
I mean, I could have been on the private jet as well. This could be pretty special.”
While Mark Wood did not explicitly name the owner or the franchise, his IPL career includes only five games across two teams -- one match for Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in 2018 and four outings for Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) in 2023.
Since the incident occurred after he had played about four or five matches in a season, cricket fans and analysts widely believe the story refers to his time with LSG and its owner Sanjiv Goenka.