Paddy Upton Reveals S Sreesanth Abused Him And Rahul Dravid Just Before Fixing Scandal

Paddy Upton, Team India’s former mental conditioning coach, has already dropped a huge bombshell through his book ‘The Barefoot Coach’. Currently serving as the head coach of Rajasthan Royals, Upton raised a number of eyebrows with his comments on former India opener Gautam Gambhir‘s attitude. Upton claimed Gambhir was riddled with insecurities, doubts and vulnerabilities. In fact, Upton went on to state the Gambhir was one of the most negative people he has worked with.

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Well, Upton’s book has another shocking revelation where he has opened up on the spot-fixing scandal, shedding light on the incidents that unfolded in the build-up to the tournament’s biggest expose. He has revealed about a shocking incident that took place in the Rajasthan Royals dressing room when now-discarded pacer S Sreesanth had a massive outburst after being dropped from a game.

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Upton revealed that the World Cup-winning bowler had gone on to abuse him and Rahul Dravid – the then captain of the Royals. Sreesanth was sacked and given the direction to go back home 24 hours prior to his arrest on May 16, 2013, due to his poor behaviour, revealed Upton.

“The reason for Sreesanth’s repeated poor behaviour, which amongst other things included blurting out in front of the team that Rahul Dravid (captain) and I (Upton) could go and f…k ourselves in response for dropping him, now made sense,” Paddy Upton wrote in his book.

Upton later in an interview to the Indian Express spoke more on the outburst, saying that the behaviour from Sreesanth was not normal.

“If someone is saying Sreesanth is an emotional person and was really upset, I am not going to be saying that you can’t have an emotional outburst. But an outburst of that nature for being told that you are not going to play is an out-of-the-ordinary outburst. We tell 13 players (Royals squad strength is 24) every single IPL game for the last 7 seasons that you are not playing. Out of the 13, four have every reason to feel disappointed, but none of these reasons are enough to have that level of public outburst (that Sreesanth had). This suggests that there was something more to it,” he said.

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Sreesanth along with two Rajasthan Royals players Ajit Chandila and Ankit Chavan was arrested by the Delhi Police in a spot-fixing case in 2013. Later, the BCCI had banned the trio for life. However, earlier this year, the Supreme Court revoked the life-ban on Sreesanth asking the BCCI to review the quantum of punishment.