Courage beyond Compare: How Ten Athletes Overcame Disability and Adversity to Emerge Champions by Sanjay Sharma & Medini Sharma

Author:Sanjay Sharma & Medini Sharma [Sharma, Sanjay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mobilism
Publisher: Rupa Publications
Published: 2014-04-30T18:30:00+00:00

MANSOOR ALI KHAN PATAUDI

A New Dimension to Courage

‘The impossible is not quite the impossible,

if you set your mind to it.’

~NIK WALLENDA~

Amongst all the subjects chosen by us in this book, Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, or Tiger Pataudi as he was universally known and revered, is perhaps the most unique. His being sight impaired, after losing his right eye at the age of twenty-two in a horrific car accident in England, may not have had too much of an impact on his daily life as his left eye was perfect, but the fact that he chose to play international cricket and excelled in it, despite having uniocular vision, and not binocular vision like the rest of us, marks him as one of the cricketing geniuses of all times.

Playing on uncovered wickets, with no helmets and without the help of all the paraphernalia we see covering today’s batsmen, Tiger faced and conquered the likes of Wesley Hall, Charlie Griffiths and Andy Roberts—all fearsome fast bowlers of their time. An astonishing feat really if one considers that the ball came up to him like a missile discharged at almost 160 kilometres per hour and beyond. Yet he scornfully scored centuries, played fearlessly, and like a tiger prowled and marshalled the cover area as a highly athletic fielder. Any which way one looks at his record, Tiger Pataudi, born with a great cricketing mind and acumen, was one of the most accomplished sportsmen India has ever seen.

With both authors of this book having played sports at the international and national levels, we salute this legend for what he achieved and what he stood for. We simply had to write about this extraordinary sportsman who showed the world how to conquer fear, and in this chapter we try to portray how he managed what he did.

Unfortunately Tiger is no more with us. We present the story of how he was able to play despite his handicap, and also try to portray some aspects of his personality through the words of his charming wife Sharmila Tagore, his close friends and fellow Test cricketers Yajurvendra Singh and Bapu Nadkarni.

A salute to Tiger Pataudi’s genius.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.