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Kolkata Knight Riders mentor Gautam Gambhir opened up on the team’s position in the Fairplay Award standings in IPL 2024 . He also joked that if any team wants to win the award should stay away from him. The former KKR player said that despite his best effort he has failed to win the award multiple times. The Kolkata-based franchise is at the last, 10th spot, in the standings at the end of the league phase of IPL 2024. The award is given to the team for their on-field behaviour during the course of the tournament.
Gambhir appeared in one of the episodes of Ravichandran Ashwin’s YouTube show, ‘Kutti Stories with Ash’. The cricketers talked about the popular awards of IPL including the Fairplay Award. He said, “Someone sent me a message a couple of days ago. KKR is where KKR is at the moment. I said yeah. At the top. ‘In fair play?’ I said number 10. ‘Is there a trophy?’ I said, No.”
“I still don’t understand. What have we done wrong in the last five games? Probably it’s just because I was sitting in the dugout.” Gambhir also talked about the incident at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, where he and Virat Kohli shared a hug and put their last year’s feud to an end. The former India opener said that after the incident he expected to win the award. Gambhir continued, “Honestly, I believed we will be at the top of the table because of what has happened at M. Chinnaswamy. I thought, there is no competition, irrespective of where are we on the points table but we got to be at the top of the fair play table. We are still at the bottom of the fair play award.”
I didn’t get selected because I didn’t touch the selector’s feet: Gautam Gambhir
On the show, Gambhir also recalled one of the incidents from his U14 cricketing tenure. The 42-year-old revealed that he didn’t get selected because he didn’t touch the selector’s feet. Gambhir recalled, “When I was growing up when I was 12, 13, I remember my first Under 14 tournament. I didn’t get selected because I didn’t touch the selector’s feet.”
He added, “From there on, I promised myself that I will never ever touch anyone’s feet. I didn’t and do not ever let anyone touch my feet.”
