Former BCCI president Sharad Pawar was pushed by Australian players after winning Champions Trophy 2006

Australia played some of their best cricket after the turn of the millennium. Steve Waugh was the skipper of both the Test and ODI sides till Ricky Ponting took over in the ODI format post 2002. Under Ponting, Australia played some of their best cricket and won two World Cups in 2003 and 2007. After four editions of the ICC Champions Trophy, Australia could not get their hands on the only Trophy that remained unconquered by them.

However, in 2006, a Ricky Ponting-led side had won the tournament for the first time. They beat West Indies in the final by a convincing margin of 8 wickets to lift the Trophy at the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai. The Australian team constituted with a number of legends in Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist, Glenn McGrath, Michael Clarke and Michael Hussey. All were delighted to get their hands on the trophy which eluded them for 8 years.

What construed next did not leave a good taste in the mouth. Since the tournament was held in India, the then BCCI president Sharad Pawar was summoned to hand away the trophy to the winning team. Ricky Ponting was in a hurry to get the trophy off Pawar and even pointed out in an offensive manner to the former BCCI president to hand him the trophy. Pawar obliged and then was pushed by Damien Martyn off the dais as the team wanted to explode in celebration.

Pawar played down the incident

Pawar, though, brushed off the incident saying that it was “a small thing, a stupid thing.” Dilip Vengsarkar, the chief selector of India at that point did not like the behaviour towards Pawar. “You expect such behaviour from uneducated people. If they wanted to pose for photographs, they could have politely requested him. This is appalling.”

The imagine of Martyn pushing off Pawar surfaced in the newspaper the next day which prompted big personalities to heavily criticised the Australian Team. It was indeed an incident which shouldn’t have happened at all.