Tampered the ball, sledged at opponents, hit the teammate with bat, banned for taking drugs, yet Shoaib claims honesty in his autobiography by accusing Wasim Akram, Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid.
Shoaib Akhtar bouncer “directed” at fame not Sachin Tendulkar
The man made of controversy returns with the book named “Controversially Yours” as his autobiography. It is none other than the Rawalpindi Express Shoaib Akhtar, former Pakistan fast bowler. Shoaib who is going to release his autobiography book today made serious claims against Akram and Sachin.
Shoaib in his book claimed “Akram destroyed my career” and confirmed that he tampered the ball many times. He even wants ball-tampering should be allowed in cricket. But the claim against Sachin is even more bizarre from Shoaib in his book, “Sachin is afraid of him”. Further he mentioned in the book, “I think players like Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid weren’t exactly match winners to start with, nor did they know the art of finishing the game”. There are lot more allegations made by Shoaib in his autobiography book.
The incident that Shoaib referring Sachin is afraid of him is happened during the 2004 test series where Sachin started walking before umpire raised his finger. Shoaib said in his book that glove was not in contact with bat (as per ICC rules- If a ball hits glove, then it can be given out only if glove is in contact with bat) but Sachin decided to walk afraid of facing him. But it is completely not true, glove was actually in contact with bat when ball hit the glove and umpire raised his finger too. Only truth is Sachin started walking before umpire ruled him out.
It is clear that some of allegations were falsely made to popularize the book and increase its rate of sale among the people. Although it is wrong to say everything written in the book is false but some were miss-directed to increase the fame like other former cricketers had done it earlier. Adam Gilchrist in his autobiography, “True Colours” questioned the integrity of Sachin role in “Monkey gate” saga in 2008 Border-Gavaskar series but later after lots of backlash from cricket world, Gilchrist denied accusing Tendulkar of lying in testimony of Monkey gate and questioning the sportsmanship of Indian players for not hand shaking at the end after losing the match. If players were honest, they should have said all this truths when they were playing not after they retire from the game. Saying the truth in the book doesn’t make them saint or great player.
Had Shoaib showed same amount of honesty on the cricketing field like he claims to be in his autobiography, he surely would have earned good name from cricket fraternity.
Tags: Controversially Yours, Cricket, Rahul Dravid, Rawalpindi Express, Sachin Tendulkar, Shoaib Akhtar, Wasim Akram
