Sreesanth alleges that Gambhir called him a 'fixer'
Incident occurred during a Legends League T20 match in Surat
ESPNcricinfo staff
07-Dec-2023
Sreesanth and Gautam Gambhir celebrate together during India's win against South Africa in the 2007 T20 World Cup • Getty Images
Former India fast bowler S Sreesanth has accused his former team-mate Gautam Gambhir of calling him a "fixer" during a Legends League match in Surat. Gambhir is the captain of India Capitals while Sreesanth is playing for Gujarat Giants in the T20 tournament.
After the match, which Capitals won by 12 runs, Sreesanth posted on Instagram a video that was shot on the sidelines of the post-match presentation ceremony. "Without any provocation, he kept on calling me something which was very rude and shouldn't have been said by Mr Gautam Gambhir," Sreesanth claimed. "I am not at all at fault, I wanted to clear the air straight away. The things he said on a cricket field live is not acceptable."
While Sreesanth did not immediately mention what was allegedly said to him by Gambhir, he revealed more details in a second video posted on Instagram on Thursday, the day after the match.
"He kept on calling me on live TV, on the centre wicket, I didn't not use a single bad word, a single abusive word to him. I only said ' what are you saying?'" Sreesanth said. "In fact I kept laughing in a sarcastic way, because he kept calling me, ' Fixer, fixer, you are a fixer … f*** off fixer. This is the language he used on live. I just moved away but he kept on saying the same words again and again. I have no idea why he started it. It was the end of the over … no idea what made him say it."
Sreesanth was one of three Rajasthan Royals players to be banned from cricket for his involvement in the 2013 IPL spot-fixing scandal. In 2019, the Supreme Court had set his sentence aside, which prompted the BCCI to reduce Sreesanth's ban to seven years, a period that ended in September 2020.
Sreesanth played 90 international games for India across formats between the years 2005 and 2011, and Gambhir was his team-mate in the XI for 49 of those games. They were part of India's title-winning teams in the 2007 T20 World Cup and the 2011 ODI World Cup.