In the age of social media, anything and everything goes viral and people don’t even bother to check if the stories that they are reading are true or not because the narratives get sensationalized in a dramatic way. Rumours in cricket have been evolved through generations.
Here are the 5 things which went viral, but are not true –
#1 MS Dhoni and his wife are childhood friends
When MS Dhoni got married to his wife Sakshi, there were a lot of rumours that the two of them were childhood friends and studied in the same school in Ranchi, but Sakshi later clarified that she got to know MS only a couple of years before her marriage and came to Ranchi for the first time after her marriage.
#2 MS Dhoni set the field for Bangladesh
During one of the warm-up games ahead of the ODI World Cup 2019, it was rumoured that MS Dhoni stopped the Bangladeshi bowler who was bowling to him and set the field himself because he thought the field that the bowler had set for him was not right.
However, that was a completely false story. Dhoni stopped the bowler because the fielder was still moving while the bowler was in his delivery stride.
#3 Ricky Ponting had spring in his bat
When Ricky Ponting scored 140 runs off just 121 balls against India in the final match of the ODI World Cup 2003, it was rumoured that he had spring in his bat which helped him hit the ball a long way, but it was such a ridiculous rumour that ICC didn’t even take it into account and didn’t bother checking Ponting’s bat that he had used in the final. Thus putting end to one of the famous rumours in the cricket to the bay.
#4 Shane Warne’s nightmares
It was told that the master blaster Sachin Tendulkar had smashed so many sixes and fours against Shane Warne that the Aussie leg-spinner used to have nightmares about Sachin.
The story actually started after Warne himself mentioned in one of his interviews that he had nightmares about Sachin. But, Warne later clarified that he was only joking and what he said was a metaphor and not real.
#5 Conversation between Herschelle Gibbs and Steve Waugh
This is another false story that goes by Gibbs dropped Steve Waugh’s catch in one of the games of the World Cup 1999 and Waugh told Gibbs that he had not just dropped the catch but the World Cup itself.
Later, Australia knocked South Africa out of the World Cup and lifted the trophy by beating Pakistan in the final, after which the Waugh-Gibbs conversation got viral. But, as it turned out later, the conversation didn’t happen in the first place and Waugh never told something like that to Gibbs.
