Time heals all wounds. But not this one. Not yet.

Over the course of my career spanning 20 years, I have had to endure a number of injuries. Among these, two stand out. On 13th March 1996, I was in Class X, preparing for AISSE Social Science exam, which I had to write the next day while India was playing Sri Lanka at Eden Gardens in 1996 World Cup semi-finals. Things were going exactly as planned, our bowlers got the SL openers early and their team was restricted to a gettable total. One moment Sachin was toying around with the SL bowling and then next moment everything came crashing down!
People say that Kambli cried that night. I didn't see him do so, How could I? when I was in tears as well! Tears make you blind. I stopped studying and retired to bed early. But I couldn't sleep. The exam that I was to write the next day was seldom in my thought. My irrational mind came to a rational decision that night, "to mark out Jayasuriya as the *fall guy* for India's loss!" That was my first major injury. From that day, I hated Jayasuriya and hated the team he played for. Such ferocious was this hatred against him that I failed to appreciate/see the other good players in the SL team. Hate too makes you blind. So when my friends discussed the brilliance of Sangakkara's batting. I had nothing to offer. I would either shrug and change the subject or just nod along deaf to what was being discussed. Over time, India managed to get better of SL and was beating them more frequently, but my scar had not healed. Every time I saw Jayasuriya bat, the scar re-opened and this continued until Jayasuriya retired from International cricket!

Digital satellite television started to become popular in India in late 2006 and early 2007. I was one of the earliest adopters of this technology at home. I did this mainly because I wanted to enjoy the 2007 world cup. There were quite a few advertisements on watching 2007 WC matches ad-free and with multiple cameras on TataSky and I just couldn't resist the temptation. That brings us to the second injury. On 17th March 2007, India played Bangladesh in their first match of 2007 world cup. I wouldn't bother to recollect or narrate what happened that day. They are painful. This time though my rational mind couldn't come up with any irrational choice as the "fall guy"!
My retirement from active fandom coincided with Rahul Dravid's retirement from International Cricket. People say that taking your mind out of something will definitely help you in overcoming pain. But that really didn't work in my case. I actively followed football for some time, but this pain from the second scar showed no signs of receding.
My *second coming* to active cricket fandom happened thanks to my son. He literally forced to me follow cricket in 2015 and now during the just-concluded Asia Cup. Watching India play Bangladesh, the old scars were re-opened. Seeing Dhoni strike those massive sixes in the penultimate over and demolishing Bangladesh and winning the Asia Cup for the record 6th time, I thought I would finally see closure on the second injury. Time heals all wounds. But not this one. Not yet.......

Bye Zak - Thanks for those yorkers!!

Being an Indian cricket fan in the 90s was a really frustrating experience. There were problems aplenty

1. Sachin was our solution to all of India's batting woes (occasionally bowling as well). Dravid and Ganguly did chip in later on this front.
2. Our best spinner hardly turned the ball, while our biggest turner of the ball hardly took any wickets!
3. Azzu bhai was probably our only best ground fielder, but reflecting now I can't be sure how much of that was genuine!
4. However, the most frustrating part was that we lacked a genuine pace bowler! 

Yes, Kapil was great, but in the 90s, he was already past his prime. Srinath had to endure tremendous pressure for too long, and his strictly vegetarian diet wasn't good enough to york batsmen out! It still embarrasses me to state that we opened the bowling with Venkatesh Prasad. Yes, his slow ball was good, but when you bowl six of them in one over, batsman won't take too long handle it! Then we had bowlers like Dodda Ganesh, Debashish Mohanty, Ajit Agarkar etc. They were all erratic, more like someone attacking with a spray gun and hoping at least one hits the mark! Indian pace bowling was subject of a standing joke in cricket commentary involving Pakistani commentators. You could hear Ramiz Raja, Zaheer Abbas, Imran Khan frequently stating on live TV that Indian pace bowling unit is a joke and all I could do at these times was to hang my head in shame!

Then one rainy afternoon in October, things changed. India was playing Australia in ICC Knockout quarterfinal. Srinath was out of the tournament with an injury and India opened the bowling with a rookie left-arm pace bowler Zaheer Khan. Australia was chasing 265 and was well within reach of the target with Steve *Iceman* Waugh and Damien Martyn at the crease. Zaheer produced a brilliant yorker to dismiss Waugh! I was pleasantly surprised to see that. I can still visualize the ball. A yorker by an Indian seamer!! This was unheard of!! At first, I thought that was a fluke! And then he did it again and again in the same match (wasn't successful, but at least they were genuine yorkers). I was suddenly elated. India had finally found a bowler who could york and york at will!

Things then started to get better. *Reverse Swing* was a word that you generally associated with Pakistani bowlers, in the 2000s this word was frequently associated with Zak!! All Pakistani commentators now started to compare Zak's reverse swing with those of the Pakistani bowlers. Zak then started to develop his own bunnies!! Mind you, he had many! Haydo, Graeme Smith, Sangakarra etc. Whenever these batsmen were at the crease, India always brought in Zak and he almost always took their wicket!! I suddenly started to feel an inch taller and walked with a spring in my step!

You could now almost always state India's chances in a game, by looking at Zak's rhythm. In the final of 2003 WC, you knew from the very first Zak over, that something was wrong and India was in for a difficult time, similarly, in 2011 WC quarter-final, you knew that Zak was still in his rhythm so India was still in the game! He was probably India's best aggressive fast bowler, whose aggression matched his bowling skills and I can never forget those yorkers! All of those balls are still etched in my memory, they were all poetry in motion!