Hindustan Times ST (Jaipur)

Win will add to Bangalore memories

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be sharing with my grandchild­ren?

Well, they will be from my days with the National Cricket Academy inaugural batch. It was year 2000. Yuvraj Singh, Mohammed Kaif, Murali Karthik, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan and many more such talented names were there.

One day we were all asked to fill an NCA form. It was all smooth except one section where one of my future India team-mate fumbled and left us in raptures. The simple question asked in the form was: “Mother tongue.” To which my friend replied “pink” thinking that NCA mandarins wanted to know the colour of the tongue rather than the language!

One more nugget came when the then NCA director Mr Hanumant Singh was speaking to another of my future India teammate. The late Mr Singh asked: “Vikas, (name changed to preserve my friendship), are you feeling home sick?” My friend replied, “No sir, nobody is sick at my home, all are healthy.” Let’s move on.

We are at seven wins in 11 games and have been searching for one more to be absolutely safe for playoffs. Well, I won’t mind if we win this game against RCB and another chapter is added to my love-affair with this city.

We had an intense round of practice on Saturday evening. Both my injured teammates Chris Lynn and Robin Uthappa took active part. So, the good news is that both are available for selection.

With RCB crashing out of this year’s IPL even the pitch here seems to have lost interest. Normally, it presents the best chance for batsmen but of late it has gone a tad slow and low. I am in two halves whether to go spin or pace. Let’s see.

In the previous two games we have been beaten by one batsman, David Warner from Hyderabad and Rahul Tripathi from Pune. They both were exceptiona­l and I think I have already set my eyes on Rahul.

On both occasions our bowling plans failed. We tried pace, we tried change-ups and changedown­s, spin etc but nothing worked.

More than the bowlers the buck stops at me. Maybe I wasn’t smart with bowling changes. Maybe there was a case of using Kuldeep Yadav and Sunil Narine differentl­y at least against Pune.

I am thinking of going to watch Bahubali-2 with some of my teammates. Another plus point of Bangalore is that one of my friends owns a multiplex here, so houseful or not, there is always room for me and my friends.

 ?? BCCI ?? KKR are banking on a fitagain Chris Lynn.
BCCI KKR are banking on a fitagain Chris Lynn.

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