Gurdaspur Diary: Gurdaspur proud of its ‘Three Musketeers’

They have been given the epithet of ‘The Three Musketeers’. In cricket, the city does not have much to offer with not many of its boys making the cut in the Ranji Trophy leave alone the national teams. However, this is set to change now. Three city based cricketers have been invited by the BCCI to train with Indian players ahead of the September 20 T-20 clash with Australia in Mohali on September 20. They are off-spinner Vaibhav Saini and medium pacers Aditya Naryan Mehta and Lovekeerat Singh.The boys are now jumping on the trampoline of confidence. For Gurdaspur, they have actually broken the glass-ceiling. For youngsters training at the government college stadium, the troika has become an inspiration of sorts. The boys are riding high on cloud nine and who knows if they manage to impress the Indian cricket’s think-tank, they may be destined for bigger and better things in life. After all, Sachin Tendulkar impressed Kapil Dev so much that he was included in the Indian team at his insistence. Likewise, examples in Pakistan cricket are galore of Imran Khan picking up young boys straight from the nets and getting them included in the national team. Wasim Akram and Inzamum-ul-Haq are two prime examples. Coach Rakesh Marshall has a million reasons to smile. The interesting part about the coach is that he was a die-hard fan of West Indian great Malcolm Marshall. Such was his adulation that his parents suffixed the fast bowler’s name to his first name Rakesh. The three young cricketers have their task cut out for them. If they bowl well in the nets, who knows what is next for them? They have no time to relax in a game known for its fickleness. Only the masters of the genre can relax and that too not for long because the game can easily elude even their grasp. Cricket is a game of oddities, cold facts and figures. A football or volleyball player can recover from a mistake, might even emerge as the man of the match. A tennis player can drop two successive sets and still prevail. Cricket permits no such luxury. It is true a player might get another chance but such is the capricious nature of the sport that he cannot depend upon it. He walks into the unknown and does so willingly. The troika knows it will have to ride on a combination of luck and pluck if it has to succeed. And what is luck? It is those periods of time when everything that rests in human hands goes wrong. While down and out, and when luck is not with them, they should remember who Marvan Atapattu is. He is a Sri-Lankan cricketer who scored 5 ducks and one run spread over three test matches. He was dropped but his resilience and mental toughness stayed with him. He then bounced back into international cricket with a bang and ended up playing 90 Tests for his country. Here’s wishing all the best to the ‘Three Musketeers’.

MP sanctions washrooms

Jagjot Singh Sandhu is a young social activist and keeps himself busy by working for the welfare of the people of Batala. Recently, he went to the local railway station and found out that it does not have even a single toilet. He immediately wrote to MP Sunny Deol and urged him to sanction some money from his MPLAD fund so that toilets could be constructed. The MP did not let him down and passed a grant of Rs 20 lakh which will be spent by the Ferozepore Divisional Manager under whose ambit the railway station falls.

IPS officer reminisces security during VIP visits

An IPS officer once disclosed that in the vocabulary of the police, three things matter more than anything else. They are elections and the visits of the PM, CM and Governor. “If anything goes awry, heads are bound to roll,” he said. Reason enough why security in Gurdaspur and Pathankot was enhanced to levels not seen by old timers before when Governor Banwarilal Purohit visited the twin border districts last week. The positive things about the increased security paraphernalia was that the common man was not at all inconvenienced for the entire duration of the Gubernatorial visit.

(Contributed by Ravi Dhaliwal)

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