Axar isn’t alone in missing a Test debut over injury
India’s tryst with injuries continued with left-arm spinner Axar Patel being ruled out of the first Test against England in Chennai. Manoj Tiwary and Rohit Sharma were the others who missed their debut due to 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 wicketkeeper 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.