 India's cricketer, Ravindra Jadeja has said sorry to the Board of Control for Cricket in India for being involved in the incident in the pub in St. Lucia,
shortly after the Indians had exited from the World T20. However, he has also
said that none of the Indian cricketers, who were in the pub at that time were
responsible for the incident and that they neither instigated any problem nor
retaliated against the Indian fans who abused them at the pub.
Jadeja wrote a letter to the secretary of the BCCI, N Srinivasan, and said
that the Indian cricketers were having a quiet dinner at the pub when they were
accosted and taunted by the Indian fans after the side had lost all their three
games in the Super Eight stage. Apparently, the Indian cricketers then tried
to tell the guests to not abuse the cricketers, but the guests did not relent.
He also said the players were not involved in a 'brawl', as had been claimed
even by Ashish Nehra and Yuvraj Singh earlier. It had been earlier alleged
that Ashish Nehra's shirt had been torn in the incident, but both, Yuvraj Singh and Nehra were quick to deny that anything of that sort happened.
In his letter to the cricket board, Jadeja wrote, "I regret that the board
has sent me a notice for the incident in the West Indies, and please accept
my apology. I had gone to the restaurant (pub) along with other Indian team
members. Some other guests, which I presume were Indian origins of the USA,
also came to the restaurant and on seeing us they started abusing us, this may
be because they were unhappy with our poor performance. We requested them not
to abuse us but they did not stop inspite of our repeated request. No way was
I involved in any ugly brawl and I went to the pub only to have dinner with
my team-mates."
Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, Rohit Sharma, Piyush Chawla,
and M Vijay were all sent show cause notices after the matter came to light
and the BCCI was very castigating of the incident. Ranjib Biswal, the team manager
had filed his report against the players involved in the incident but had said
that there had been no brawl.
India had crashed out of the tournament after losing all their Super Eight
games, the second time this had happened in a row.
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