New Delhi:
Indian spinner Ravichandran Ashwin gave a befitting ‘funny’ reply to former South African cricketer Herschelle Herman Gibbs. The mini-jibe between Gibbs and Ashwin took the Twitter fans of both the cricketers by surprise.
The whole thing started when Ashwin put a promotional tweet on new Nike React running shoes and while praising the product, said that he could not wait to ‘flaunt them’.
Gibbs, taking it as a joke, commented on Ashwin’s tweet saying he hopes the Indian cricketers to ‘run a bit faster now’ with those new shoes, which sparked a ‘banter’ between then, as both the cricketers claimed.
This is where the conversation took a turn. Ashwin, who was stunned with Gibbs response, replied to him with Gibbs’ chequered history including the match-fixing point, saying he isn’t athletically gifted as the Proteas, but he does have an “ethical mind not to fix games which put food on my plate.”
Gibbs, taken aback by Ashwin’s reply, accused Ashwin of not being able to take a joke in the right spirits, to which Ashwin attempted to diffuse the matter saying his jibe, too, was a joke but everyone, including Gibbs, took it in a wrong way.
However, after the ‘banter’ went viral, Ashwin pulled his match-fixing tweet down from the social media platform and put up another with some clarification.
Herschelle Gibbs, on April 7, 2000, was charged by the Delhi Police for fixing the ODI series with then team captain Hansie Cronje, against India in March. He was eventually sacked and also confessed that he had accepted an offer from his former captain to make less than 20 runs in an ODI in India earlier in the year for USD 15,000.
