IPL 2022 – ‘He was drunk and hung me out from the 15th-floor balcony’

“This dates back to 2013, when I was with Mumbai Indians,” Chahal said, speaking to R Ashwin in a Rajasthan Royals video, published on April 7, about how players handle tricky off-field situations. “We had a match in Bengaluru and there was a get-together after that. So there was a player who was very drunk – and I won’t take his name – he was very drunk, he just called me aside, and he took me outside and he hung me out from the balcony.

“I was holding on to him, with my arms around his neck. If I had lost my grip, we were on the 15th floor… Suddenly many people who were there came and handled the situation. I kind of fainted, and they gave me water. Then I realised how responsible we need to be when we go anywhere. So that was one incident where I made a narrow escape. Had there been a small mistake there, I would have fallen down.”

“They were so lost that they taped my mouth and forgot about me completely during the party. Then they all left and, in the morning, someone came to clean [the room] and saw me, and called a few others and untied me”

Chahal, on the time in 2011 when Symonds and Franklin tied him up and left him in a room overnight

“It happened in 2011, when Mumbai Indians won the Champions League. We were in Chennai. He [Symonds] had had a lot of ‘fruit juice’ (laughs). I don’t know what he was thinking, but he and James Franklin got together and tied my hands and legs and said, ‘no, you’ve to open’,” Chahal said. “They were so lost that they taped my mouth and forgot about me completely during the party. Then they all left and, in the morning, someone came to clean [the room] and saw me, and called a few others and untied me. They asked me since when I had been there, and I said, ‘I’ve been here the whole night’. So that became a funny story.”

When asked if Symonds and Franklin had apologised after that, Chahal said, “No, they said when you drink so much juice you don’t remember stuff in the morning (laughs).”

Mumbai was the first IPL team for Chahal, now 31, and he has since played for Royal Challengers before being bought by Rajasthan Royals ahead of the ongoing season of the IPL.