Ashish Nehra, one of the most loved man in the Indian Cricket team, played his last final professional cricket match on his home ground in New Delhi on Wednesday, against the Kiwis at the Feroz Shah Kotla, thus shutting down the curtains on his eight year old sports career.
Indian team bid him adieu just the perfect way by winning the first match of the three of the T20 series by whooping 53 runs. Virat Kohli, along with his team rallied behind Nehra, who went around his home ground in the lap of honor ,while , the captain of the team, Virat Kohli along with Shikhar Dhawan, lifted Nehra on their shoulders after the completion of lap.
He is popularly called “Nehra Ji” by his cricket fraternity. Every person has a tale to tell about him. He is known to be an honest and a good man whose sense of humor is the reason to keep the folklore alive in the team. He is a good human being and a very good friend is what everybody accepted unanimously.
He made his international debut in the test match against Sri Lanka in 1999 and played his first ever One-day international (ODI) match against Zimbabwe in 2001.
Anyways, a token to gratitude to his injuries, which led him play only 17 test matches in his entire career, claiming 44 wickets throughout. His ODI career has yielded 157 wickets over 120 matches and he has 34 scalps in 27 T20Is. If he wouldn’t have been succumbed to his injuries then he would have added a few more wickets into his record.
Nehra has his ankle operated in 2005, which made him take a long break from the game. However, He made a strong comeback, emerging as the third highest wicket-seizer with 19 scalps during the second edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) that brought him the laurel of a call-up to the national squad.
He was since then, a persistently regular player until he broke his finger during a semi final match in Pakistan in 2011, which led to another long layoff!
The final match on Wednesday was a sight, that will always make him nostalgic as the crowd was cheering him throughout the match and it was very over whelming. The crowd also stayed back after the match and supported him by encouraging him, while he was rallying around the ground. His family was also present during the match who later joined him and his team on the day of his last home ground presence.
Later upon being asked of his future plans he revealed that “I know only cricket. I haven’t decided what I will do next. I will sit and relax and think.”
The one of the most adored star of Indian cricket bid Adieu to his game with a whopping mark of 235 wickets from 164 matches across all the formats in the international cricket.
