The Test of My Life: from cricket to cancer and back by Singh Yuvraj

Author:Singh, Yuvraj [Singh, Yuvraj]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9788184004014
Publisher: Random House India
Published: 2013-03-18T18:30:00+00:00

It was June when Jatin began his treatment with the promise that things were going to be fine. I felt the same, not worse. As the days passed by, I would sometimes switch on my computer and ask Mr Google, ‘What is cancer?’ When nearly 175 million answers popped up in one-twentieth of a second, I would baulk, shut my laptop and say forget it. It is being handled. During this period I was taking up to fifty tablets every day, Vitamin C, multi-vitamins, to boost my immunity. Over the coming months I would often run a temperature. Every three-four weeks I’d be down with 1000 F, an aching body, a bad stomach. About the tumour I told myself and everyone who asked that it was a kind of lump, a generic kind of tumour, and repeated what I had been told: it would shrink and go away and I would be fine.

Now I look back, I suppose a lot of this was driven by fear. I worried about what my life was going to be like if it was cancer. Of what people would say, what would be their reaction. They would have completely crazy theories about why I had cancer (and, predictably, when I did make the news public, a favourite conclusion was that I had lung cancer caused by heavy smoking. I try to stay away from newspapers and television but how can you keep away from those people whom you know who don’t hesitate to call or email or text about whatever is the latest theory doing the rounds).

At this time I turned into a complete gym rat. I was determined to be tip-top, in good shape and good humour. Cancer? Cancer happens to old people, cancer doesn’t happen to athletes. I was not yet thirty, I had a full life to live, there were appointments to keep, dreams to fulfil. The English summer and our Lord’s Test was there to look forward to. I had to find my peak. It became a diversion. You may wonder what everyone around me—my parents, my friends, my teammates—were saying. Well, whatever it was, I didn’t listen. Since I turned sixteen, I have been very independent. I have lived my life on my own terms. Maybe it made me pigheaded. Whatever caused it, the fact is that in the middle of 2011 I believed that the England Test series was my priority, and when I start to believe in something, that’s that. No one could get me to budge.

England could be the first step that I would take to establish my place in the Test team. Since Sourav retired in November 2008, the no. 6 spot had not been decisively claimed. Whoever did well in England and Australia this year could make it his own. In the year gone by, it had seemed so close, but injury and illness kept me out of one Test in 2010 and then I found I was dropped from the next when I was fit.

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