Former India cricketers Virender Sehwag and Harbhajan Singh came to Wriddhiman Saha's rescue in the journalist row on Sunday (February 20). Saha posted a tweet right after he was dropped from India's Test squad from the Sri Lanka home series. On Saturday (February 19) Saha shared a screenshot on Twitter of some disrespectful messages from a journalist after the former did not agree to his request of giving an interview. While sharing the screenshot, Saha posted on Twitter, “After all of my contributions to Indian cricket…this is what I face from a so called ‘Respected’ journalist! This is where the journalism has gone.”
Reacting to Saha’s post on Twitter going viral, Sehwag and Harbhajan quote-tweeted it back and backed Saha to the hilt.
Harbhajan urged Saha to reveal the name of the journalist and then urged the BCCI to protect players from such threats.
"Wridhi you just name the person so that the cricket community knows who operates like this. Else even the good ones will be put under suspicion...," Harbhajan said.
Meanwhile, Virender Sehwag tweeted: "Extremely sad. Such sense of entitlement, neither is he respected nor a journalist, just chamchagiri. With you Wriddhi."
The journalist was seemingly pestering the player for an interview. The chat shared by Saha read," Do an interview with me. Will be good. If you want to be democratic then I won't push. They choose one wicketkeeper, whoever is the best. You try to choose 11 journalists, which is not the best according to me. Choose whoever can help the most."
"You did not call. Never again will I interview you. I don't take insults kindly and I will remember this. This wasn't something you should have done," the chat added.
Saha said on Saturday that he was told by head coach Rahul Dravid that the selectors and the team management were willing to look beyond the senior wicketkeeper.
"The team management had told me that I would not be considered henceforth. I could not tell this so long as I was part of the India team setup," an explosive Wriddhiman told mediapersons on Saturday.
"Even coach Rahul Dravid suggested that I think about taking retirement," he spilled the beans on classified conversations with head coach.
Speaking after the squads for the Sri Lanka series were announced, chief selector Chetan Sharma said he can't go into the details of why the Bengal wicketkeeper was not picked for the Sri Lanka Tests.
In his absence, Rishabh Pant continued to be picked as the first-choice wicketkeeper and KS Bharat as the stand-by.
