The test of my life
By: Chaitanya Prakash Bapat
Tags: Book Review, Cancer, Sports, Cricket, Books

Yuvraj’s life has been full of words beginning with C — Chandigarh (place of birth), cricketer (occupation), Cup (passion) and Cancer (life defining moment).

Glorious cricketing career — part of 3 World-Cup winning teams — under 19 WC (2000), ICC World T20 (2007) and ICC World Cup (2011).

Player of the Tournament in 2000 and 2011.

Deal with God. Just like Yuvi gladly accepted the positives, highs in his life. He was willing to accept his lows, the challenges. In illness, he felt he had no right to ask God - “Why me?”

First famous person in India after the beautiful Nargis Dutt to have cancer -Yuvi.

Story about struggle, denial, acceptance and new struggles ahead.

Navjot Singh Sidhu after Yograj’s insistance watched teenage Yuvi play in Maharani Club, Patiala, appraised him and concluded he would be upto no good.

Love for sports in general — tennis (due to passion for Borris Becker, 17yr old Wimbeldon champion), skating and cricket.

How was Yuvi? “Well-meaning, all-consuming, fun-loving and prone to dive head first into trouble. Always seeking balance, I would run and fall, dust myself off and start over. ”

“Cricket is a beast. It demands the labor of building a fortress around a treasure and that treasure is timing.”

In 70s and 80s, fast bowling allrounders were a rage Botham, Hadlee, Imran and Kapil.

Keeps coming back to the time Sidhu wrote him off over and over.

“If I could sweat the bullets and swallow the bitter pills, cricket would take me a long way, to where my dad had dreamt of reaching”

“Anything was better than being home and seeing my parents argue.”

“Cricket stopped being a straitjacket and became a solace.”

“If cricket were all about the under-19 level … then I would have been its Viv Richards!”

To get more, to want more -It is what a cricketing life needs to be built around … seeking more.

Yuvi the fielder- Started as a dropped catch on debut Ranji match. What followed was an intense practice with dad. Ball would be hit like a bullet and he would be expected to stop it. “To the point where you could have hit my palm with a hammer and it wouldn’t have hurt”

“Quite like the Indian cricket fan, he (Yograj) lives between two extremes. I had to find my own way to make my peace with him.”

Anger is a bad quality that all of us have in us but we need to keep it under check. Rule it before it rules us.

Cooch Behar Trophy, biggest event for young cricketers, second only to Ranji Trophy. Final between Punjab vs Bihar (Yuvi vs Dhoni)

These days, I don’t like calling the unfortunate things that happen ‘bad luck’. Because when good things happen, I don’t put it down to luck either. Things just happen, you have to go with the flow, cope, handle it and move on.

In the months leading up to the World Cup I was torn between confidence in my ability and the betrayals of my body

Kevin Pieterson calls Yuvi — “pie-chucker for his bowling action”

Yuvi calls Viru (Lala as he always smiling and happy) and Virat (Cheeku due to haircut resembling bunny cartoon from Champak), Zaheer (Zak, Idea-wale, Idea baba)

Time in the middle — crucial for any cricketer (batsman specifically to find his form, rhythm, get a morale boost)

Controlling the desire to belt the leather off the ball, it was like denying a basic impulse. Maybe like sneezing. Innings against Ireland (5-for in World Cup and match winning 50 was the highlight of WC for Yuvi)

Not try to hit his way out of trouble, but rather play like his dad wanted him to — belt it along the carpet, along the ground, not in the air, carving an innings out of nothing

Pride himself to be a player who has always been able to “change gears”

What is maturity? Instinct and experience.

On Sachin, “He must have been waging his own internal battles. I didn’t understand his battles, but he understood mine”. “Play it for someone you think you owe something to. Make the WC part of that debt you have to fulfill.” Yuvi told himself that he would play for Sachin, who he spent his childhood watching, grown up watching.

Call kit-bags as coffins. Pasted picture of Sachin’s on-driving a ball on Yuvi’s ODI debut alongside Yuvi’s own on-drive.

History’s can be wrongly written and sometimes we get a chance to rewrite the wrongs. We would have to beat the world champions to be world champions. That’s the way the dice had rolled, and so be it.

Neglecting my vomits, neck pains, blood-flecked coughs and sleepless nights, wasn’t I living on the edge? What was more important life or the World Cup? My answer to myself was if life throws me back there again into the same stage, I will end up taking the same decision.

‘C’ Change : from Cricket to Cancer

“As Ratan Tata, the Indian industrialist, says, and I sometimes repeat, ‘a promise is a promise’ — and I wanted to keep mine”

“The way my life has been anyway. Running full tilt and falling, then dusting myself and carrying on.”

“Once again cricket gave me an escape out of medical thoughts. As I kept doing fine on the field, I found it easy to work my way around the off-field trouble even as it grew and intensified.”

Weight doesn’t creep up on me, it pounces.

Test cricket talk starts with Mama (VVS)

Anterior cruciate ligament (every athlete keeps cribbing about it) Why? 1 of the 4 major knee ligaments that holds knee joint together, keeps it stable, supple and moving. Torn ligaments can’t be fixed like fractures with casts. Usually require surgery (time away from sport)

Hindsight is 20–20

FNAC — Fine needle aspiration cystology to know more about the white cloud blocking his left lung.

“Hope, even if its answers are ridiculous and vague, is a very powerful emotion. ”

Feeling trapped between living and dying — needle pierced during FNAC test. Despite the elevated pain tolerance threshold of an athlete, Yuvi suffered and endured incredible pain

Undergoing chemo was like living inside a dead body

There was this tumor which was sometimes tumor and sometimes a rumor. There’s a huge gap between being physically fit and medically fit.

The stigma of cancer can perhaps defeat you more than the disease itself. Denial, hence, is a typical reaction at first.

Thynoma, thymoma, sarcoma, seminoma.

Seminoma — rarest of rare kind of germ cell tumor, manageable tumor. Look, he said, your tumor may not be Sachin Tendulkar but Virat Kohli it is.

From denials, doubts to decisions it had taken me a long time to begin my treatment.

Three 21-day cycles. Day 1–5 (first test match) 3 drugs (3 sessions). 2 day break. Day 8 (single ODI). Days 9–14 break. Day 15 (final T20). Last 6 days break. (63–6)57 days.

Almost 2 months. Like a busy tour. Maybe even like a rare break between 2 series. 57 days. A little longer than a WC. Who remembers 57 days in a year?

IU Simon Cancer Care chemotherapy station outside Indiana Uni

“Chemotherapy may feel like death but it is the only way through to life again for many people when they have cancer. I was told a“bout its power over cancer, but I had not expected its force over the human body and mind.”

Showing 6 home runs to Elizabeth at IU, seeing himself from healthy man tonking Stuart Broad’s deliveries outside Kingsmead to now besides a chemo station was humbling.

People piggyback on you when times are good but they don’t let go even when you have cancer.

Handsome is as handsome does! Putting the bald pic on Twitter to announce the world, cancer is on and he’s fighting it.

Paroon Chadha — typical NRI cricket fan, Yuvi’s Man Friday in Indianapolis.

When you’ve cancer, you just have it. You’re not old or young, you are simply a cancer patient. You collapse, you puke, you angry, you cry, you bombard your caregiver with requests for this dish or that, and the moment it is produced turn away from it, you throw up the dish so carefully prepared seconds after eating a tenth of it.

One thing that kept Yuvi going — This too shall pass.

“You promise yourself that when you are on the other side you will make it up to everyone. But when you come to the other side you realize no one expects anything in return. What you did for everyone who loved you was do the chemo.”

Mumbai’s night is a song of the sea putting you to sleep

How was it like to fight cancer? Honestly, it was like facing the toughest bowling of my life in the worst possible conditions.