Former India allrounder Irfan Pathan has on Sunday (April 19) revealed his father got upset once at Pakistan legend Javed Miandad over his comments on the pacer during India’s tour of Pakistan in 2003-04.
During the remarkable tour, former Pakistan captain Miandad, who was the coach of the Men in Green at that time, had made the infuriate comments on the all-rounder, saying the bowlers like Pathan can be found on any street in Pakistan, which irked his father and in fact, he wanted to meet Miandad in the Pakistan dressing room after the Test series was over.
Pathan recalled the tale in the Star Sports’ show Cricket Connected: “I remember Javed Miandad saying something like bowlers like Pathan are there in every street of Pakistan. My father, I remember, reading that news, he didn’t like it at all.”
The Baroda lad continued, “I remember in the last game as well, he came to Pakistan, he came to me and said ‘I want to go to the dressing room of Pakistan and meet Javed Miandad’ and I said ‘I don’t want you to go there.’ As soon as Miandad saw my father, he stood up and said, ‘no I didn’t say anything about your son. My father had a smirk on his face and said, ‘I didn’t come here to say anything to you. I wanted to meet you as you were a wonderful player.”
Meanwhile, the 2003-04 series consisting of four ODIs and three Tests was India’s first tour of Pakistan after the Kargil war had suspended cricketing ties between the two nations.
The Sourav Ganguly-led Indian cricket team showed fantastic performance throughout the series winning the Tests 2-1 and the ODIs 3-2 in Pakistan.
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Reflecting back on his experience of touring Pakistan for the first time, Irfan, who was one of the key performers in India success, said: “The food, the cricket the dressing room stories, Sachin paaji asking me to sing a song after winning the series and small little things and the whole team was playing like a unit, it was wonderful.”
On the other hand, former India pacer Ashish Nehra also shared his experience of that tour: “Those six weeks he was hitting sixes left right and centre there was no doubt about it. Virender Sehwag triple hundred, Rahul Dravid double hundred, Irfan Pathan performance, all that is there but to me off the field, Pakistan, the nation as a whole and Lakshmipathy Balaji in the dressing room.”
Nehra signed off by saying, “I still remember Javed Miandad inviting all of us to his house and that food in his house was amazing, I still remember it,”
(With IANS Inputs)
