Irfan Pathan recalls involving Kumar Sangakkara’s wife while sledging him

Irfan Pathan, on Saturday, announced his retirement from all forms of cricket and it wasn’t surprising news given that the pacer had last played international cricket eight long years ago. Soon after announcing his decision, the former India allrounder went down the memory lanes and recalled several moments from his career. He spoke of a lot of memories, among which was an incident when he and Kumar Sangakkara were engaged in an ugly war of words during a Test match in the capital city New Delhi.

The mentor of Jammu & Kashmir cricket narrated the incident involving Sangakkara when they were playing against each other at the Feroz Shah Kotla in 2005. Irfan was asked to open the innings in the second innings of the match in absence of regular opener Virender Sehwag who was warming the bench due to an injury.

Irfan Pathan did not disappoint, he top-scored for India with a knock of 93 and helped the hosts beat Sri Lanka by 188 runs in the first match of the series. And amidst his knock, Sangakkara decided to sledge him but ended up on being at the receiving end.

“I remember one of the stories with (Kumar) Sangakkara. We were playing in Delhi. I scored about 93 in the 2nd innings when (Virender) Sehwag got injured. I was sent up the order. At that time, Sangakkara knew the match was going away from them. (Muttiah) Muralitharan was bowling really well. He was just trying to tell me something very nasty,” recalled Irfan Pathan.

“He said something personal, I said something personal to him. I said something about his wife, he said something about my father and my mother. At that time, we were not happy with each other,” Pathan said on Star Sports.

But the two legendary players buried the hatchet soon when they played together for Kings XI Punjab in the Indian Premier League.

“After some time, we were playing in the same team for Kings XI Punjab. I remember, for a month, as soon as his wife used to come on the right, I used to go left. One day, Sangakkara came and said… ‘you remember this guy, he is the guy who said something about you’. I said sorry. And then Sangakkara explained, I said something first and then only he said something about you. It ended that way. There is no hard feeling and then we became friends,” Pathan revealed.