After reading the title, wondering what is the big deal :-). I accept. Not a big deal for you. Neither it is for me now, but when I was hit, it was indeed painful. Very very painful. And I have been hit twice.
Both the occasions when I was umpiring. So umpiring is not as safe as it looks on the TV screen. We as umpires do not have to face the likes of Brett Lee or Shane Bond to be hit. But that does not prevent us from being hit either. It is not that I have been hit only twice, but these two occasions were really painful.
The first occasion was when I was in Belgium last year, 2010. It was around the beginning of the season. The match was between Antwerp Indians CC v Belgium Development side (U-19). It was AICC batting, first innings of the game. The batsman (if I remember correctly) was Sehul Javeri. He was hitting the ball all round the park. It was very evident that BDS would have to chase some very big score. Sehul hit a perfect straight drive. This occasion I was at the bowling end. The ball was coming straight towards me. It was at my face height. It was coming really fast. This was not the first time that I was in such a situation. The only thing that I had to do was to get away from the line of the ball. On a normal day, I would have done so. As I had mentioned in one of my previous post, I have been struggling with my knee for more than a year now. June 2010 was the time when I was just recovering from my injury. At that point of time, to make rapid movements from one position to other was a huge problem for me. In umpiring, one has to do that a lot. Without any doubt last season, I had been struggling to move around. In this situation, when the ball was coming towards me, to prevent myself from being hit, I had to move away, but my knee did not help. The ball was very close and the only thing that I could do was to raise my hand to prevent myself from being it on the face. All this happened in span of couple of seconds. It was well in time and the ball hit my elbow (right at the joint) and it was a nasty blow. The next moment, I was on the ground with excruciating pain. Luckily, ice cubes were available with the home team (AICC) and I rubbed the point of injury with ice for about 5 minutes. I felt some relief. Later, I wrapped up few pieces for ice in my handkerchief. Then resumed my umpiring with the handkerchief tied around my elbow. I continued like that till the ice melted. The pain was still there but bearable and did not impact my umpiring much, though I had two injuries to manage now (one on my knee and another on my elbow). But somehow I managed both and the game as well. Luckily, I did not have any fracture, there was no swelling, but I had to live with the pain for another couple of weeks.
The next incident was this year in February back in India. It was a game between Twentieth Century CC and Minerva CC. The game was played in Chennai Medical College ground. This was the most uneven ground that I had come across. But we had no other choice but to play the game. The fielders were having tough time fielding the ball, as the ball would suddenly jump in front of them. The maximum damage would be done when the fielder is at the boundary. He would be all set to field the ball and then all of a sudden the ball would take an unprecedented turn or bounce (because of the unevenness of the ground) and will cross the boundary. On one such occasion, the ball crossed the boundary. I was umpiring at the bowling end. I have the habit of scoring as well when I am umpiring. On this occasion, as the ball crossed the boundary, I signalled 4 to the scorer and then I was busy recording the 4 on my card. My attention was completely towards the card. The fielder threw the ball towards the bowler. The ball pitched in front of the bowler, the bowler was ready to collect. At this point of time, the ball took a vicious turn and bounced high and by the time I realized what happened, I was down on the ground. The ball had hit my left jaw joint. The pain was unbearable. More than the pain, I was worried about any possible fracture of the jaw. My jaw had already been fractured once in the past (not while playing or umpiring) and I was still bearing the scar (figuratively) of that. So I did not want another one. With all these thoughts in mind, I was releived to know that one of the team had ice with them. I touched my jaw and there was very little swelling, which gave me a hope that there was no fracture. I tried to open my mouth wide open and I was able to do it with no severe pain. This was another positive. But I had to rub the jaw with ice to prevent the injury from worsening. I did it for a while and then, like previous incident, I wrapped some ice in the handkerchief and held it against my jaw with the left hand and resumed the game. So with one hand on my jaw, I began umpiring as well. I am not sure, if I was being foolish or being brave (in my opinion, neither of them), but I wanted to carry on with the game. In my assessment (as in previous incident as well), the injury was not severe enough for me to leave the field. I was able to manage the game, without any problem. The game got over but like before, I had to bear this pain for another week or two. In this case it was even more painful as whenever I had to eat something, I had to bear this pain.
That completes the narration of the two painful incidents that I had. Wondering why I had to come up with this now, as both the incidents are not recent one. The answer is very simple, I am making an honest attempt to keep my blog alive. With season coming to an end, I will not have any games in the recent future. That would mean that I will not have any game that I could discuss in this blog. The result, another break in my writing. So I thought, I will come up with some incidents from my past.
Hope it was not a painful reading. :) Will try to come up with something less painful (if you are lucky, more interesting) next time. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment