It seemed like Shubman Gill’s official coronation. He slowly walked down a curved staircase into a sparkling hall with shining chandeliers hanging over cricketing legends giving him a standing ovation. There was Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, Chris Gayle, Kevin Pietersen, BCCI officials and London’s chatterati – they all stood and applauded as the MC on the stage read out the many records that Shubman broke this week. Virat Kohli too turned up later in the evening.
The new Indian captain, players, coach Gautam Gambhir and the entire touring party found time to be at a fundraising dinner for former India all-rounder and World Cup winner Yuvraj Singh’s cancer charity YouWeCan. They would raise more than a million pounds to aid cancer patients with a noteworthy contribution coming from India’s wicket-keeper Rishabh Pant, who won a bid, in an evening of many auctions, at 17,000 pounds.
Pant fought off strong challenges from London’s deep pockets who had paid, as the event’s website said, as high as 12,450 pounds for a table that gave them ‘exclusive access to Yuvraj’, a cricket celebrity on the table, champagne reception, haute 3 course meal and complimentary wine, beer and spirits. Pant kept raising the paddle, and team mates well aware of his audacity and punts on the field kept shaking their heads and smiling. The bid battle was to be the presenter to an award for India’s MVP Jasprit Bumrah.A massive artwork with a real bat engraved into the painting, would be at the centre of the bidding frenzy.
The other awardees, kind of Razzies not Oscars, included Pant, Ravindra Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav. Pant for being the last to board the team bus, Kuldeep Yadav for perennially blaming ‘bad times’ for misfortunes and Jadeja to be the most persistent DRS requester.
“Actually, Mohammed Siraj also thinks that whenever the ball hits the pad it is out. And once at the replay it’s this far from stump,” Shubman, who along with Gambhir were the jury, would say by spreading his hand about half a foot apart. The table with the Indian team would laugh the loudest. After the hard fought win at Edgbaston and a couple of days before the Lord’s Test, the players were having fun in the company of their seniors and super seniors.
Yuvraj didn’t miss the chance to pull the leg of his old team-mate, the very serious Gautam Gambhir. “There needs to be a bid on making Gambhir smile,” he would say. The two old mates would chuckle. “I would like to say here the decisions Gambhir and Ajit (chairman of selectors Ajit Agarkar) had taken have played a big role in the team doing well,” said Yuvraj.
Everyone who took the stage would share their Yuvraj memories – some joyous, some somber from the days of his fight against cancer. Sachin Tendulkar would strike the perfect chord. “Before the start of the 2011 World Cup, Yuvraj’s energy levels were not at their usual. So before our first game against Bangladesh I took him out for dinner and had a chat with him,” Tendulkar said, recalling the meeting when Yuvraj vowed he would win the Cup for him.
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Kevin Pietersen would first speak about their on-field match-ups and those days when the left arm spinner would dismiss him as a bowler calling him ‘pie-chucker. “But when he was recovering, I went to his home to be with my friend. He is a beautiful human being.”
Shubman’s memories were very recent. Not many years back, the now Indian captain, with his other teenaged budding cricketers in Chandigarh, climbed the wall of the Mohali stadium to watch Yuvraj train. “After his training we approached him and asked “Photo chahiye paaji (Want a picture)”. His reply to us was ‘Kabhi photo chahiye, kabhi helmet chahiye, kabhi pad, kabhi bat (Some days you want a picture, some day helmet, bat, pad … ).” Shubman wouldn’t stop smiling during his narration. Yuvraj mockingly locks his lips, trying hard to stop the giggle from escaping. “These young kids always cook up stories.”
After the Indian team left, Virat, a London resident now, would enter the arena. He would be called on stage, the MC would tell him how much India misses him. “I just coloured my beard two days back… when you start doing that after every four days, it is time,” he said, stroking his chin.
Virat went back to a Yuvraj game after he returned to the Indian team as a cancer survivor. This was an ODI game at Cuttack and India would lose quick wickets at the start. This was when MS Dhoni and Yuvraj would have a long partnership. “I was sitting with KL Rahul, I think it was, in the dressing room watching the two. I told him this is like going back to the childhood days, watching these two stitching partnerships and saving India,” Virat would say.
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That World Cup winning batch, including the hero of the Knockouts, Yuvraj and the run-rattlers of the Final, Gambhir and Dhoni, had inspired many generations of boggle-eyed cricketers. One of them was India captain now, and Yuvraj the happy mentor.
