Don't blame the prawns: Mike Gatting reveals what made him sick during the 1993 Madras Test

Legend has it that former England batsman Mike Gatting took ill on a trip to India in 1993 after he decided to trust his stomach with some prawns.

However, Gatting, who was in India a few months ago, denied that the seafood delicacy was the reason he fell ill. “I love doing things I enjoy. I enjoy eating prawns. It’s a very nice story, but I don’t think it was the prawns that made me miss the Test in Madras. There were probably four or five of us. I remember, the previous morning, Graeme Hick had got a bug. I think it was a viral that we got,” he recalled.

Gatting, now 62, said in hindsight that he and the others shouldn’t have played the Test. “I remember, it was the most-embarrassing moment in my Test career. I should not have been playing. But I went out to the field. I dropped a fairly easy catch, perhaps the easiest catch I ever dropped on a cricket field. They said that if it was a cheese roll, I probably would have caught it. But there we were,” he added with a chuckle.