Former New Zealand skipper Ross Taylor was signed by Rajasthan in the 2011 Indian T20 League player auction. Before this, he had played for Bangalore for a couple of seasons or so. During his stint with the three-time finalists, he had done well and thus, he was signed by the 2008 winners. However, his season for the Jaipur-based team turned out to be a disaster.
In the 12 games played by the right-hander, he could only score 181 runs. Meanwhile, in his latest autobiography ‘Ross Taylor: Black & White’, he made some sensational revelations. One of them was that he was slapped by one of the team owners. Writing about the incident, he explained that he had gotten out on a duck in a game against Punjab.
The team lost the game and the owner, ‘who wasn’t named in the book’ went on to slap the former Kiwi skipper in front of the team management.
“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,” said Taylor.
“A case in point: Rajasthan played Kings XI Punjab in Mohali. The chase was 195, I was lbw for a duck and we didn’t get close. Afterwards, the team, support staff and management were in the bar on the top floor of the hotel. Liz Hurley was there with Warnie.
The 38-year-old added that the person told him that they don’t pay him to get out on ducks.
“One of the Royals owners said to me, “Ross, we didn’t pay you a million dollars to get a duck” and slapped me across the face three or four times. He was laughing and they weren’t hard slaps but I’m not sure that it was entirely play-acting. Under the circumstances I wasn’t going to make an issue of it, but I couldn’t imagine it happening in many professional sporting environments,” he added.
