‘Rajasthan Royals owner slapped me across face 3 or 4 times’: Ross Taylor reveals shocking incident from IPL 2011

Former New Zealand batter revealed that Rajasthan Royals (RR) owner had slapped him on an occasion when he got out for a duck in an IPL match against the Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) in Mohali.

Taylor had played with the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) during the initial years of IPL, but the Rajasthan franchise bought him for a whopping $ 1 million in 2011.

Taylor in his autobiography, Ross Taylor: Black and White, revealed that he would have preferred to be in the RCB camp.

“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.”

It was in the 23rd match of the season when Punjab had posted a daunting 195/7 on the board on the back of a feisty 71-run inning of Shaun Marsh. The Royals were no match on the day for Punjab as they finished their 20 overs on 147/7 with none of the batters able to get going. Taylor had got out for a duck after playing five deliveries.

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Taylor reveals the incident stating that Shane Warne and her partner Liz Hurley were present at the bar on the top floor of the hotel, along with other players and management staff of the team.

“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, Taylor wrote in his autobiography.

Taylor further expressed that he was shocked to see such a thing happening in a professional sporting environment.

“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,” Taylor wrote.

Earlier, Taylor’s autobiography was also reported to reveal racism incidents in the New Zealand dressing room.

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