'Okay, go bowl': Robin Uthappa remembers Dhoni's words before epic Bowl Out vs Pakistan in 2007 T20 World Cup - WATCH

Indian cricketer Robin Uthappa announced retirement from Indian cricket on the same day he pulled off an epic stint in the Bowl Out vs Pakistan at the T20 World Cup 2007. The Bowl Out is unknown to those who were born after 2004 or 2005. That Bowl Out was an experiment from ICC to find a winner if a T20 game was tied. This was before the world body decided to introducer Super Over, calling it the best way to bring a result after a tied T20 match. In Bowl Out, each team got five attempts to hit the three sticks. The team which hit the most number of time after 5 attempts was the winner. 

In the 2007 T20 World Cup group stage clash vs Pakistan, India's Virender Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh and Robin Uthappa hit the sticks on back-to-back attempts while none of Pakistan bowlers could do any damage, eventually losing the match to India after the scores were tied.

During an interaction with Star Sports in August 2020, Uthappa had revealed how Indian team used to practice the Bowl Out and had even zeroed in on the bowlers who would take the ball in hand if a Bowl Out situation came upon.

On _

As Robin Uthappa announces his retirement from all forms of cricket, relive the iconic bowl-out between India and Pakistan from the ICC Men's @T20WorldCup, #OnThisDay in 2007 _ pic.twitter.com/FtsStrGAbT — ICC (@ICC) September 14, 2022

"Before every practice, we used to play a game after warm-up, so what Venky (Venkatesh Prasad) did was instead of playing football, he said let’s play bowl out (batsman vs bowlers). Among the batsmen, Sehwag, Rohit and me used to get a hit very often," said Uthappa. 

Uthappa was one of the bowlers in that Bowl Out vs Pakistan and he gives credits to MS Dhoni, who was captaining the team for the first time, for believing in a non-bowler to do the job. That was because Uthappa used to be quite good in the nets during the Bowl Out and he was confident to do it as well.    

"When this match got tied, we were very excited, very jubilant to be honest because we tied a game that we were losing. Once we tied the game, emotions were high an d our confidence was also high. I have to give credit to MS Dhoni here. At that point in time, at a very young age in his first tournament and his first game as captain, a guy went up to him, his teammate, who is a non-bowler and is not his main skill, went up to him and said, ‘Bro, I have to bowl and I am going to hit the stumps,’ and I swear he (Dhoni) didn’t even bat an eyelid, he said 'okay, go bowl'," Uthappa said.