It’s a tie!

It had been a difficult couple of years for me in cricket. Competition, quite a lot of it unfair, was breathing down my neck, and I was suffering from the first major injury of my cricket career, without realising how serious it was. Constantly wearing inferior cricket shoes as I did, I had developed an Achilles tendon problem, medically known as bursitis, which gradually grew unbearably painful. Off-season, I had trained harder and harder, somehow gritting my teeth and ignoring my pain, thinking this was the usual temporary soreness of muscles. I even ran with my awful cricket spikes on the gallery steps round and round the stadium when it rained. My condition naturally grew worse. The new season was about to start and at 32, I had serious cause to worry about my future in the game, if this injury was going to lay me low. And all this after I had been dropped - unfairly, I can assure you - from the Hyderabad team in the previous Ranji season and I had sworn to get back into the team, come what may.

That is when my friend Dr Harsha, an orthopaedic surgeon, arrived on the scene like some angel of mercy. He correctly diagnosed my condition and offered to give me a cortisone injection in the affected part. “The injection pain will kill you but after a couple of days of that hell, you will have a new heel. If you are lucky, the relief could be permanent.”

I took the chance and decided to brave the injection pain. Just as Harsha had promised, the pain was real hell, and I wondered if I had made a mistake. Two days later, I woke up in the morning, completely free from pain! It was as if I had a new heel, a new foot, a new left leg!

I was then playing for Andhra Bank, led by Vijay Paul in the absence of Narasimha Rao who was away playing league cricket in Ireland. We had stars like Jyotiprasad, Ravi Kumar, H Ramprasad, Meher Baba, Chandran and many more and we were about to play the first round of the Ghulam Ali memorial knockout tournament. I don’t remember the early rounds, but I clearly recall our encounter with the Jaisimha-led Marredpally Cricket Club in the quarterfinals. I was delighted to claim Jai’s wicket for the first time and finish up with five wickets. We won despite a fighting, elegant 85 by Vivek Jaisimha. In the semifinals, I took seven wickets against State Bank of Hyderabad, another star-studded team, and we entered the final in style.

Syndicate Bank were our opponents in the final, which was a 2-innings match limited to 75 (8-ball) overs a side in the first innings and 35 in the second. Our opponents were a strong outfit, even though their Test player Shivlal Yadav was away playing for the country. Led by Vinod Reddy, they had in their ranks Jugal Kishore Ghia, Chamundeshwarnath, Sainath, Shivkumar, Moses Nityanand and several other talented cricketers.

Winning the toss, we batted badly and were soon in a bad way. As our manager, the late C S Shyam Lal, and I took a walk around the boundary line, I told him, “Don’t worry, if we make 150 we will win,” so confident was I with my bowling form after the recent treatment. We managed to reach 169 with a small contribution from me in partnership with Jyoti and we were soon on the field. We claimed a couple of early wickets but the obdurate Shivkumar tested our patience with his complete mastery of whatever we sent down. In the last over before stumps, I managed to get one past him (by sheer mind power, I think) and we went home in a reasonably happy frame of mind. Next morning, our bowling really clicked and we bowled Syndicate Bank out for 125, with 7 wickets my share of the booty.

When we batted a second time, we fared much better, and I was again involved in a rearguard partnership with my good friend Jyoti. Syndicate Bank had to make 224 in 35 (8 ball) overs to win the match. Moses Nityanand and his partner (whose name I don’t recall now) blazed away, but our left arm spinner Meher Baba and I were able to put the brakes on the rampaging batsmen, and though Moses made a hundred or thereabouts, we managed to peg Syndicate Bank in their run chase. I bowled the 34th over, yielding only three runs and helping effect a run out (my second in the innings). I had taken six wickets, totalling 13 for the match. Meher bowled the last over with Syndicate Bank needing six runs to win the match. The batsmen ran like crazy between the wickets, there were run out attempts that missed the stumps by a whisker, until the last ball target was a mere two runs. The batsman swung and missed and they ran a bye. It was a tie!

Once the significance of the result sank in, disbelief and joy replaced the disappointment of not winning and both teams were able to enjoy the rare occasion. I invited all the players of both teams home for beer and dinner, and my wife had the shock of her life when some 30 bedraggled, dirty, tired cricketers landed at her doorstep. The celebrations went on till well after midnight and many of the guests stayed overnight. Rarely in my personal experience have two rival teams enjoyed each other’s company as we did that night.

 

It’s a tie

It had been a difficult couple of years for me in cricket. Competition, quite a lot of it unfair, was breathing down my neck, and I was suffering from the first major injury of my cricket career, without realising how serious it was. Constantly wearing inferior cricket shoes as I did, I had developed an Achilles tendon problem, medically known as bursitis, which gradually grew unbearably painful. Off-season, I had trained harder and harder, somehow gritting my teeth and ignoring my pain, thinking this was the usual temporary soreness of muscles. I even ran with my awful cricket spikes on the gallery steps round and round the stadium when it rained. My condition naturally grew worse. The new season was about to start and at 32, I had serious cause to worry about my future in the game, if this injury was going to lay me low. And all this after I had been dropped - unfairly, I can assure you - from the Hyderabad team in the previous Ranji season and I had sworn to get back into the team, come what may.

That is when my friend Dr Harsha, an orthopaedic surgeon, arrived on the scene like some angel of mercy. He correctly diagnosed my condition and offered to give me a cortisone injection in the affected part. “The injection pain will kill you but after a couple of days of that hell, you will have a new heel. If you are lucky, the relief could be permanent.”

I took the chance and decided to brave the injection pain. Just as Harsha had promised, the pain was real hell, and I wondered if I had made a mistake. Two days later, I woke up in the morning, completely free from pain! It was as if I had a new heel, a new foot, a new left leg!

I was then playing for Andhra Bank, led by Vijay Paul in the absence of Narasimha Rao who was away playing league cricket in Ireland. We had stars like Jyotiprasad, Ravi Kumar, H Ramprasad, Meher Baba, Chandran and many more and we were about to play the first round of the Ghulam Ali memorial knockout tournament. I don’t remember the early rounds, but I clearly recall our encounter with the Jaisimha-led Marredpally Cricket Club in the quarterfinals. I was delighted to claim Jai’s wicket for the first time and finish up with five wickets. We won despite a fighting, elegant 85 by Vivek Jaisimha. In the semifinals, I took seven wickets against State Bank of Hyderabad, another star-studded team, and we entered the final in style.

Syndicate Bank were our opponents in the final, which was a 2-innings match limited to 75 (8-ball) overs a side in the first innings and 35 in the second. Our opponents were a strong outfit, even though their Test player Shivlal Yadav was away playing for the country. Led by Vinod Reddy, they had in their ranks Jugal Kishore Ghia, Chamundeshwarnath, Sainath, Shivkumar, Moses Nityanand and several other talented cricketers.

Winning the toss, we batted badly and were soon in a bad way. As our manager, the late C S Shyam Lal, and I took a walk around the boundary line, I told him, “Don’t worry, if we make 150 we will win,” so confident was I with my bowling form after the recent treatment. We managed to reach 169 with a small contribution from me in partnership with Jyoti and we were soon on the field. We claimed a couple of early wickets but the obdurate Shivkumar tested our patience with his complete mastery of whatever we sent down. In the last over before stumps, I managed to get one past him (by sheer mind power, I think) and we went home in a reasonably happy frame of mind. Next morning, our bowling really clicked and we bowled Syndicate Bank out for 125, with 7 wickets my share of the booty.

When we batted a second time, we fared much better, and I was again involved in a rearguard partnership with my good friend Jyoti. Syndicate Bank had to make 224 in 35 (8 ball) overs to win the match. Moses Nityanand and his partner (whose name I don’t recall now) blazed away, but our left arm spinner Meher Baba and I were able to put the brakes on the rampaging batsmen, and though Moses made a hundred or thereabouts, we managed to peg Syndicate Bank in their run chase. I bowled the 34th over, yielding only three runs and helping effect a run out (my second in the innings). I had taken six wickets, totalling 13 for the match. Meher bowled the last over with Syndicate Bank needing six runs to win the match. The batsmen ran like crazy between the wickets, there were run out attempts that missed the stumps by a whisker, until the last ball target was a mere two runs. The batsman swung and missed and they ran a bye. It was a tie!

Once the significance of the result sank in disbelief and joy replaced the disappointment of not winning and both teams were able to enjoy the rare occasion. I invited all the players of both teams home for beer and dinner, and my wife had the shock of her life when some 30 bedraggled, dirty, tired cricketers landed at her doorstep. The celebrations went on till well after midnight and many of the guests stayed overnight. Rarely in my personal experience have two rival teams enjoyed each other’s company as we did that night.