Exceptional unknown journey

Today’s mainstream media covers cricket but only men’s cricket and women’s cricket (women’s cricket is covered very rarely) The specially-abled cricketers are not given any attention. In 2019 August Indian disabled team won the disabled T-20 world cup which was held in England. Indian team played in the memory of late ‘Ajit Wadekar’ the name of team India was ‘Wadekar Warriors’ led by ‘Vikrant Keni’.
I personally interviewed many disabled cricketers. Everyone had their life story but that life story which touched was of Kashmir’s ‘Wasim Iqbal’ and Karnataka’s ‘Jithendra Nagaraju’ First I’ll talk about Wasim and then cover Jithendra’s story.

Wasim Iqbal’ 26 comes from Anantnag, Jammu & Kashmir he’s one of the rarest Kashmiri to play in the Indian team. Wasim’s parents used to do farming his family had a small land. Wasim has also done Electrical Engineering. Wasim has a stiff knee in his right leg.

While he was practicing Parvez Rasool was impressed by his game and he advised Wasim to play disability cricket and then he started playing and when selection round was going on he got selected for the Indian disable team

When I asked Wasim about how’s he feeling to be part of Indian Cricket he said ‘getting selected in the Indian team and that too when you’re from Kashmir it’s very difficult but thanks to Almighty Allah his blessings are with me along with my family they supported me to play cricket’

My brother and My uncle trained me as a player also I would like to add one thing ‘Parvez Rasool’ also cheered me up to play cricket confidentially his contribution to my career was very important and today I’m very happy to be in the team’

Now let’s talk about ‘Jithendra Nagaraju’ Karnataka’s  ‘Jithendra Nagaraju’ was from a rural area. The 24-year youngster has faced a cobra bite on his right hand when he was 1 Year 2 months old. His grandfather was into ayurvedic medicine he applied that and the poison was controlled but his whole right hand was affected few days after he was taken to the hospital and there he had a 50:50 chance of survival but the doctors managed and after that, he got disabled with his right hand. His father was a labor they didn’t have enough to eat, Jithendra said, ‘I was lucky to get admission in Christ University Bangalore, I scored 85% in 12th std and they offered me a scholarship and I studied here even I got selected in the College cricket team I used to hit sixes with tennis ball later I played with the leather ball and coach also supported me’

After that he got a job in ANZ bank I.e Australia New Zealand Bank he was a payment officer in the bank after few months he got into HP IT company his work there was in the back-office department he used to do the invoice collecting work there. He quit his job after 4 months and played cricket.

He said ‘At that time my parents were worried about my job, but somehow I managed the things and with the blessings of my parents I got selected in the team
I’m happy now because after a lot of struggle I got selected and hard work always brings you to the stepping stone to success’.

So this was the struggling story of these 2 players. I hope I covered the information which many of you might be reading for the first time. I hope you like the article, will be back with another article to stay tuned.