India’s tryst with injuries continued with left-arm spinner Axar Patel being ruled out of the first Test against England in Chennai. He was expected to make his Test debut but was forced to pull out at the last minute due to a pain in the left knee that he first experienced during a practice session on Thursday.
Patel could have been a like for like replacement for Ravindra Jadeja, in terms of skills as both bat and bowl left-hand, who has been ruled out of the entire series due to an injury he suffered during the third Test of the series against Australia at Sydney.
Patel isn’t the first Indian who has missed out of an international debut due to a last-minute injury.
In 2007, a 20-year-old Manoj Tiwary had travelled with the Indian team to Bangladesh and was expected to make his ODI debut. But to his bad luck, the Bengal middle-order batsman fell awkwardly and injured his shoulder and was ruled out of the three-game ODI series.
Tiwary did make his ODI debut against Australia at Brisbane in February 2008. A jet-lagged Tiwary faced a barrage of bouncers from Brett Lee before being castled by a yorker from the pacer. His 16-ball effort yielded just two runs. In the next seven years, Tiwary had a stop-start career in which he played 15 ODIs and 2 T20Is for India.
A few years later in 2010, Rohit Sharma met a similar fate as Tiwary. In fact, his was a bit more tragic. Sharma had replaced VVS Laxman for the Test against South Africa at Nagpur. The team was warming-up by playing with what the then skipper MS Dhoni described as “rocket ball”. Sharma slipped and twisted his left ankle. As fate would have it wicket-keeper Wriddiman Saha was handed a Test cap and played as a pure batsman.
Sharma had to wait for nearly two-and-a-half years to make his Test debut when he played against West Indies in Kolkata and cracked 177 to win the man of the match award. Sharma is currently enjoying a second wind as Test player after being asked to convert into an opener.
