Finally, Munaf gets a place in the spotlight

Two seasons ago, John Wright was so impressed by Munaf Patel’s speed that he called the youngster to join nets at the National Cricket ...

Two seasons ago, John Wright was so impressed by Munaf Patel’s speed that he called the youngster to join nets at the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore. The Boy from Bharuch was tipped as a fast bowling star of GenNext, someone to keep Irfan company.

Last year, a shoulder injury in an Irani Trophy match turned his world around and laid him off from the game for one whole season — but now he’s back, one of the 36 probables named by the Indian selectors for the tri-nations series in Sri Lanka in August.

‘‘I think I’m very lucky’’, Munaf told The Indian Express after the news broke. ‘‘I was not expecting my name in the list. But I’m now perfectly fit.’’

It’s been a long, slow recuperation, though the bleakness was alleviated by two months spent with Dennis Lillee — ‘‘the best phase’’ — at the MRF academy in Chennai earlier this year. That’s also when he got to mix with his seniors Zaheer Khan, Laxmipathy Balaji and Ashish Nehra.

Indeed Munaf will return to Chennai — he’s currently in Delhi — for another session with Lillee before heading for the week-long fast bowlers’ camp in Bangalore, which begins on June 27. There, he will join Zaheer, Balaji, Nehra, Irfan, Agarkar and 10 others. ‘‘I’m looking forward to being there,’’ Munaf said, keen to emphasise that the one-year lay-off had not forced him to cut down in any degree on his pace. ‘‘Except for the slight changes that Lillee suggested, my bowling is still the same,’’ he said.

It’s all a long way from the dark days of his injury. Speaking on the injury that kept him out of the game for almost a year, the Mumbai bowler said: ‘‘There came a time when I’d be very afraid…of every step I took, of every ball I bowled. I feared even a slight injury could damage my career. The Irani Trophy saw my worst fears come true.’’

Munaf is now ‘‘mentally confident’’ that he can sail past any such calamity in future. ‘‘I have learnt to accept that injury will always be a part of the game. It is now up to me to handle it with ease,’’ he said.

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PROBABLES: Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid, Mohammed Kaif, Yuvraj Singh, VVS Laxman, Dinesh Mongia, Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Venugopala Rao, Neeraj Patel, Dheeraj Jadhav, M S Dhoni, Dinesh Karthick, Parthiv Patel, Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, Murali Kartik, S Sriram, Hemang Badani, Zaheer Khan, L Balaji, Ashish Nehra, Irfan Pathan, Ajit Agarkar, Gagandeep Singh, SS Paul, Ranadeb Bose, Harvinder Singh, Amit Bhandari, Siddharth Trivedi, Sreeshanth, Joginder Sharma, Munaf Patel, J P Yadav, Jesuraj