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Sourav Ganguly was left so convinced by an elaborate April Fool's prank that he offered to give up the India captaincy, Harbhajan Singh has recalled. Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan had created fake newspaper clippings accusing Ganguly of criticising his teammates, while Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid joined the act to make the story believable.

Fake Newspaper Reports Leave Ganguly Stunned

The prank took place on April 1, 2005, a day before India began their ODI series against Pakistan in Kochi.

Recalling the incident in a conversation with PTI, Harbhajan said the entire team was sitting together when he and Yuvraj decided to target Ganguly with the fabricated reports.

“Puri team baithi hui thi (the entire team was sitting) when we created this drama and decided that we will make an April Fool of Dada. Yuvi started it: 'Dada, what is this statement that you have given to the press?' He told him that you have called Yuvi party animal, Harbhajan ko kisi ki padi nahi hai, Ashish Nehra is also in his own world and Zaheer Khan also parties a lot.”

Ganguly immediately questioned the reports and denied making any such comments.

“Dada said 'when did I say this?' Then we showed those clippings to him and said, 'What is this?'”

The pranksters then brought two senior players into the act. Tendulkar and Dravid pretended to confront Ganguly about the alleged comments, making the fake reports appear increasingly genuine.

“...we had already spoken to the seniors about this. I told Paaji (Tendulkar), 'Paaji, you tell him'. And he said to 'Dada, if you have done this, this is wrong'. Rahul Dravid was also playing along, so he also said, 'Dada, this is not done, yaar'. When two senior players said that, Dada thought (this must be genuine).”

Ganguly Offers To Give Up Captaincy

The prank reached its most dramatic point when Ganguly, still believing the reports were genuine, offered to step down as captain if he had actually made the comments.

“He said 'I swear, I didn't do this. I'll give up the captaincy if (it's proved that) I did this'.”

But Yuvraj and Harbhajan were not finished.

A few players picked up their cricket bags and started walking out of the dressing room, leaving Ganguly increasingly worried about what was happening to his team just a day before a high-profile series against Pakistan.

“The poor guy...While he was reading them (the newspaper clips), two or three of us picked up our bags and started walking out. Dada came running after us, saying, 'Arre yaar, wait, guys! The match is tomorrow. What are you people doing?'”

The prank eventually fell apart when someone broke character and laughed.

Looking back, Harbhajan admitted the players later felt they had put Ganguly through enough.

“Poor Dada was the kind of captain whom we could fool that day, but later we felt, 'Yaar, we've really put this decent man through it.' If it had been some other captain, he would genuinely have made us pick up our bags and told us, 'Get out of here and go home'.”

He added:

“But he was like a big brother.”

John Wright Was Waiting Outside

While the drama unfolded inside the dressing room, India's head coach John Wright was reportedly waiting outside to begin the team's training session.

Harbhajan said Wright had been deliberately kept away from the prank.

“John Wright was waiting outside, thinking, 'When are they going to come out? When do I set the field? When do I start getting them to field?' 15 minutes, 20 minutes passed -- the team still hadn't come out.”

The New Zealand coach apparently had no idea why his players were taking so long to emerge.

“And he just kept waiting, while all this drama was going on inside.”

Harbhajan believes such moments were important in keeping the atmosphere relaxed inside the Indian dressing room.

“Because if, in sport, you talk only about cricket -- or only about whatever sport it is -- the dressing room becomes gloomy, serious. Then the fun goes away. A happy dressing room is a winning dressing room.”

He explained that players also needed to know when to leave a bad performance behind.

“You come back from the ground, discuss it, and that's it. If you keep thinking about it and carrying on with it, then the atmosphere becomes gloomy. And if you've made the atmosphere like that, what are you going to do when you go back?”

The prank came just before India produced a strong result in the opening ODI against Pakistan. India won the match by 87 runs, with Virender Sehwag and Rahul Dravid scoring centuries while Tendulkar claimed five wickets.

India, however, could not maintain that momentum throughout the six-match series. After winning the first two matches, they lost the next four to surrender the series 4-2.

Harbhajan recalled the prank while speaking to PTI, describing it as one of the dressing-room moments that helped teammates bond away from the pressure of international cricket.