Robin Uthappa, who last played for India in 2015, has managed to stay in touch with the game in more ways than one. Playing T20 cricket leagues and commentating on the leagues has been his way of staying in touch with the game.
He was recently seen playing for the champions India in the 2024 World Legends Championship. In the process, he found time to reunite with his teammates from India’s 2007 T20 World Cup victory. India was led by Yuvraj Singh with Harbhajan Singh, Irfan Pathan, Yusuf Pathan and Suresh Raina also part of the squad.
All of them have made comments since retiring from the game. Yusuf Pathan also managed to join politics after retiring from international cricket. Uthappa, in an interaction with Cricket.com, spoke about MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Gautam Gambhir and a variety of other topics related to Indian cricket.
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Robin Uthappa recalls his T20I debut against Pakistan
At the end of the interaction, he was called for a quick session where he answered questions about his favourite cricket match, his IPL team and the future generation of Indian cricket.
Recalling his favourite cricket match, he picked his T20 World Cup debut against Pakistan in 2007. He scored 50 off 39 balls on his T20I debut against Pakistan and also took the wickets in the famous Super Over contest between the two teams. India’s first match against Scotland was called off due to rain and hence tactically it was the debut T20I match for many of the Indian cricketers. That was also the first bowl out in the history of T20I cricket and India won by a 3-0 margin.
He then spoke about his favourite IPL team and named Chennai Super Kings and Gujarat Titans as his favourite teams for the culture they have imbibed by playing the game. Uthappa played for CSK in IPL and had good success. Moreover, it was with KKR that he won two IPL titles in 2012 and 2014. Uthappa won his third IPL title with CSK in 2021. He had his best run in the IPL for KKR scoring 2439 in 86 matches at an average of 30.49 and scoring close to 140 for them as well.
“Like you said, I’m a cricket nomad. I just want a team to win that plays well. I want to see the magic happen. And you can see it from outside. And magic happens often in CSK, in Gujarat Titans in the last few years. LSG has also put that into practice, a bit. Even though they have had their issues. I agree. Just to finish,” he said.
He concluded his interaction by naming three future superstars of international cricket. Since he himself is a wicket-keeper batsman, he picked three batsmen namely Shubman Gill, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Rachin Ravindra.
Robin Uthappa was one of India’s earliest T20I cricketers. He was part of India’s squad for the 2007 T20 World Cup, where he scored 113 runs in seven matches in the tournament. His most notable contribution was his 50 against Pakistan, which is also his highest T20I score. In total, he played 13 T20Is and scored 249 runs in the format, with a best score of 50.
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