Former India international Robin Uthappa, who spent the last two seasons of his Indian Premier League career at Chennai Super Kings, has made a shocking revelation about himself.
Uthappa, who has been a journeyman in the IPL, have represented franchises like Mumbai Indians, Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Pune Warriors, but he found maximum success during his long stint with Kolkata Knight Riders.
Uthappa won his first IPL title with KKR in 2014 and in the same edition, he won the Orange Cap, scoring a whopping 660 runs in 16 appearances.
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The wicket-keeper batter from Karnataka was picked by CSK ahead of the IPL 2021 season, where he spent two years. Despite joining the five-time champions, Uthappa did not find much success in the team and spent most of his maiden season on the bench.
In 2021, Uthappa played in just four matches and scored only 115 runs. The lack of game time under MS Dhoni's leadership at CSK caused a great amount of stress in the cricketer.
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Robin Uthappa started smoking during IPL 2021 season
Speaking on the First Umpire podcast, Uthappa revealed that he took up smoking due to the extreme distress of a lack of game time at CSK.
Uthappa said: "In 2021, when I was playing for CSK and I was part of the team, and I was not getting to play. Obviously internally it was very stressful and internally emotionally very challenging for me.
"And when you play for the team, it means you want to make sure that your energy, your value addition, what you want to do for the team, that should not interfere. So I was able to manage that, but at the back end, I was in quite a lot of pain. So as a coping mechanism, I started smoking in the 2021 IPL."
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After being released by CSK ahead of the 2023 season, the former India international decided to bring the curtains down on his career and he finally announced his retirement from professional cricket in December 2023.
Uthappa added: "In 2023 I had a conversation with my son when it started off as a one-off thing and it went up to around four to five cigarettes. So in 2023, at the end of 23, maybe 26 December, and I was also thinking, in fact on 20 December I had also told Sheetal that, yaar, I am doing this but I don’t even like that I am doing it, but it has become a habit. So I told her, yaar, maybe I will quit right now, within a week. I have the ability to start and go off something cold turkey completely. But I have the ability to do that. Where it came from I don’t know, but I have that ability in me."