A young female fan stunned everyone at a function Monday as she tried to publicly hug and kiss Indian cricketer Irfan Pathan, but the pacer used his reflexes to block her advances at the last moment.
The incident took place at a city hotel, and Irfan could only manage an embarrassing smile as he thwarted 24-year-old Kolkata girl Sabina Khatun's advances. She had literally lunged at him were on to the stage, where the pacer's elder brother Yusuf Pathan was also present.
Khatun, who works for a company, was one of the recipients of prizes for a promotional contest held by Tata Indicom and tried her desperate act while waiting for a photo op with the Pathan brothers after receiving the prize.
The girl, a resident of Park Circus in the southern part of the city, later said she could not hold herself on standing next to Irfan.
"I am a big fan of Irfan. I wanted to touch him. And I have touched him. I am very happy," a smiling Sabina later told mediapersons, who scrambled for a byte from the girl.
Asked what she was mumbling to Pathan on the stage, she replied: "I was telling him that I wanted to hug and kiss him".
"But he was saying 'No no, please don't do it. Shivangi gala kat legi (Shivangi will kill me)".
Shivangi Dev is Irfan's fiancee.
However, Sabina vehemently denied that what she did was pre-planned. "It all happened at that moment. I did not make any plans beforehand".
However, a couple of scribes who were seated a row in front of the girl before she went to the stage, said they heard her telling an accompanying boy to click her photo the moment she did "the act". "At that time we did not realise what she was up to," the journalists said.
Irfan later told the organisers that he was on his guard after the girl propositioned the kiss.
"I kept a watch on her. The moment I saw her move, I reacted and blocked her."
In the end, it was also the difference between the heights of the tall cricketer and the girl that saved the blushes for Irfan.
The incident is reminiscent of present Indian captain M.S. Dhoni being hugged and kissed publicly by a frenzied female fan at the Eden Gardens two years back.
Dhoni, who was then yet to take over as the team skipper, was in the city for a conditioning camp ahead of the Indian cricketers' tour to Bangladesh when Haseena Nasreeb Shiuli of Berhampore in Murshidabad district grabbed him after breaking the security cordon.
Shiuli, a die-hard Dhoni fan, kissed him as he came down from the team bus to give an autograph
