Bharatiya cricketers Suryakumar Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav and Washington Sundar along with members of the team’s support staff offered prayers at the Shri Mahakaleshwar temple in Ujjain early on Monday morning.

The players prayed for the speedy recovery of Rishabh Pant, who is recovering from multiple injuries following a car crash last month. The three players were seen wearing a dhoti and angavastram as they took part in the Bhasma Aarti of Bhagwan Shiva.

“We prayed for the speedy recovery of Rishabh Pant. His comeback is very important to us. We have already won the series against New Zealand, looking forward to the final match against them,” Suryakumar, popularly known as SKY, told ANI.

Bharat is currently playing an ODI cricket series against New Zealand and the third ODI is scheduled to be held in Indore on Tuesday, January 24.

A few weeks back, 6 players – Yuzvendra Chahal, Suryakumar Yadav, Washington Sundar, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Shreyas Iyer – and bowling coach Paras Mhambrey and other members of the support staff had prayed at the famed Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala ahead of the final ODI in the last series with Sri Lanka. The players wore traditional attire – white dhoti and angavastram – for the divine darshan and to seek Bhagwan’s blessings.

KL Rahul had earlier offered prayers at the temple in September 2022 to seek the blessings of Bhagwan Vishnu.

With so many cricketers visiting the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple, some social media handles had wondered where Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and other senior members of the team were. Kohli had posted a photo while having a meal on the beachfront along with wife Anushka Sharma, and recommended all to visit Kerala.

Suryakumar Yadav has made it a habit of offering prayers at mandirs wherever he goes. He had sought blessings at the Siddhivinayak temple in Mumbai to usher in Gregorian New Year 2023.

It is noteworthy that rabid Hindu-hating ‘journalist and academic’ Dilip Mandal had launched a campaign to paint SKY as a ‘bahujan facing discrimination’ in the Bharatiya cricket set up. The truth is, despite all the hate spewed non-stop by people like Mandal and despite all their attempts to paint SC-ST-OBC communities as ‘oppressed’ and non-Hindu, ordinary Hindus from all walks of life share a deep-rooted love for Hindu Dharma and mutual respect for the diverse Dharmic paths to attain the divine.