Brave Hearts

Author(s): Kumarpal Desai
Publisher: Eye Care Foundation

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Courage Personified
straight ball by moving forward his bat and pad, while he started to drive hard the ball which was moving outside the wicket. Thus his struggle continued unabated. He was trying hard to find out his weaknesses and to rectify them by corrective measures.
Just at that moment he received the good news. He was appointed the skipper of the Board President's eleven that was to play a match against the MCC which was on a tour of India. Pataudi wanted to play more and more cricket. He also wanted to show his prowess on the ground. A match was played at Hyderabad against the MCC team. Pataudi with only one eye intact entered the fray. He was wearing a contact lenses in the right eye. Due to that he started seeing two balls at a time in the place of one, as if two balls at a distance of six inches were being hurled at him. He was hardly in a position to judge a delivery. He was greatly upset. During the tea interval while he was batting with 35 runs, he went to the dressing room and removed the lens. He returned to the crease after tea to score 70 runs, the highest score for his team.
His heart was constantly pulsating. He was straining himself to find out how he could improve his game. But because of his style of playing and his indomitable spirit, no one knew the seriousness of the injury he had sustained. He was still not in a position to move his hand from the injured right shoulder to hit the ball high. On the basis of his performance in the very first match after the injury, he was selected to play for India in the third test match at New Delhi against the MCC side. Thereafter Pataudi never looked back. He scored a century in the fifth test of the series played at Madras. He was repeatedly hitting the ball over the heads of the fielders. This was judged the best century of the series. His father had scored a century in the very first test match of his
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