Trouble lies in short ball for Murali Vijay

It’s 2005 and L Balaji, the former India bowler, was running at the Chemplast ground in Chennai.

 

It was early afternoon. Sometimes he would run at 1 in the afternoon, at times even get there before dawn at 5.30 am, and occasionally after sunset.

 

He was just coming back from a severe back injury, ignored doctors’ advice to give up the game and was beating his body back into shape to make one of the hardest comebacks in Indian cricket.

 

He thought he was the most hardworking cricketer in town. But irrespective of the time he would come to Chemplast to run, he would find one solitary figure running there.

 

Long hair tied up in a bandana, the person would be running or just be there. Balaji found out that it was M Vijay, who had just been selected to the Chemplast second team.

 

Curious about this ever-present figure, Balaji stuck up a conversation and one day asked him, “Can you do an Iron-man plank test?” “Vijay asked me my best timing, I told him, ‘er, I can do it for five minutes’. Two minutes is tough, five is really really hard, but I just told him to see what he says.

 

“I told him how it’s done through a phone app and he did it. He actually did it for five minutes! He did it so easily and later told me that it was his first time. ‘I thought if you can do it, so can I’. I was shocked, and that’s when I realised this guy is special mentally. When he puts his mind to something, he does it, and so I am not surprised at how far he has come now. Batting with elegance and all is fine but this boy is mentally really tough. To overcome the stuff he has experienced in his life, and being India’s Test opener is no small thing,” he narrated.

 

Vijay would need that famed mental toughness right now. It’s sort of a dicey stage in his career. For the second time in his career, the opposition thinks they have identified a chink. The first time around it was the looseness outside off stump and after an average show in West Indies in 2011, he was dropped.

 

Now it’s the short ball that England have successfully targeted him with. “As the series has progressed England think they got him sorted out with that short ball just outside off stump,” exclaimed Nasser Hussain on air. Vijay has got on to the front foot and just frozen there. The bat has propped up as a face-shield and the ball has either kissed the edge en route to the men behind or popped up to short-leg.

 

Source: Indian Express