Episode 39

Mar 21 2007

Prabhu and Amiteshwar air their grievances

The vote out meant two of the boys had their voting lines blocked until the next match, a crucial loss of votes that would need to be made up in the 24 hours before the Cricket Star is announced.

All the boys had a special nets session with Kapil Dev as he provided some vital bowling cues. But Sanjay Manjrekar and Kapil Dev also sat down with Amiteshwar and Prabhu and helped them come to terms with the vote out. While Amiteshwar was too harsh on himself, Prabhu had taken the vote out too personally. Kapil and Sanjay counselled them and helped them refocus on the future and not get bogged down by the past.

Samandeep, too, had a problem. He felt he had played an equal role with Dinesh Salunke in winning the match, and hence, he should have shared the Man of the Match award. When Dinesh was asked whether he felt the same, he said yes. However, both of them also agreed on the reasons why Prabhu was voted out.

Samandeep and Dinesh tried telling Prabhu that the team did not like his self-serving move—going for the suicidal run despite knowing Kadir had already fallen. Prabhu agreed that he had made a mistake, but felt that his teammates were not taking his primary role as a consistent wicket keeper into account as well as his runs.

On the other hand, Amiteshwar felt his team mates, including Karan Joshi, had made their decision based not only on his past performance, but also keeping his future in mind. Having injured his hand in a freak incident in the nets, Amiteshwar had six stitches on his hand. He had not been impressive in the last two games after bowling exceptionally well initially. His teammates felt that he could make no further impact on the game with the injury and, hence, voted against him. Amiteshwar rightly pointed out that assuming someone would not be able to do his job was not a criterion to judge.

Under Prabhu’s captaincy, the team had won against the Leicestershire Foxes. This time the coaches left it to the boys to decide who their captain for the final game would be. While Dinesh seemed to have a good following, Karan Joshi was still the favourite, despite his fall out with Robin Singh, director of the academy. Well, some things never change!