Former New Zealand batter Ross Taylor claims that an Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise owner of the Rajasthan Royals team “slapped” him three to four times during the 2011 IPL season.
The disclosure was made by Taylor in his latest recent book, Ross Taylor: Black & White, and he claimed that the incident happened after a loss to Kings XI Punjab in Mohali.
In his book, Taylor stated, “The chase was 195, I was lbw for a duck and we didn’t get close.” An excerpt from Taylor’s book was posted on Stuff.co.nz.
“The squad, support staff, and management were then at the hotel’s bar on the top floor. Warnie [Shane Warne] was present along with Liz Hurley. We didn’t pay you a million dollars to acquire a duck, one of the Royals owners said to me, slapping me three or four times in the face. I’m not certain if it was all play, but he was laughing and they weren’t hard slaps. I wasn’t going to complain about it because of the circumstances, but I couldn’t see it occurring in many professional sporting settings.”
The Royals have not yet made a remark on this.
Taylor played one season for Royals in 2011 after being acquired for USD $1 million at the auction after spending three years with Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) between 2008 and 2010. Taylor wrote in his memoir that he regretted not staying at RCB.
Taylor said, “While it was amazing to go for a million dollars, in the end I would’ve been better off RCB had got me for US$950,000.”
“If they had, I would have been with them for the fourth year. Although the IPL is not very sentimental, there is devotion to long-serving players, and I probably would have had a longer IPL career if I had only played for one franchise. On the other side, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to play with legends like Virender Sehwag, Shane Warne, Mahela Jayawardene, and Yuvraj Singh if I had remained at RCB.”
“When you fetch that sort of money, you’re desperately keen to prove that you’re worth it. And those who are paying you that sort of money have high expectations – that’s professional sport and human nature. I’d paid my dues at RCB: if I’d had a lean trot, the management would have had faith in me because of what I’d done in the past. When you go to a new team, you don’t get that backing. You never feel comfortable because you know that if you go two or three games without a score, you come under cold-eyed scrutiny,” he went on to write.
Taylor played 12 matches for the Royals in 2011, hitting 181 runs at a strike rate of 119. He then played three more seasons in India for the Delhi Daredevils and Pune Warriors.
While playing cricket in and for New Zealand, Taylor also acknowledged in his autobiography that he had encountered racial insensitivity.
