Ashish Nehra made his Sri Lankan Test debut in 1999. His first victim was former Sri Lankan captain Marwan Atapattu. While Nehra did not have a big Test career, with a red cherry on his side, he certainly left the impact. The left-hand pacer recently talked about his Test debut in a conversation with his former Delhi and Indian team-mate Akash Chopra.
Speaking of his early days in international cricket, Nehra said that during the Ranji Trophy and his test debut, there was only one pair of shoes he used. The former pacer revealed that after every inning, he’d stitch the shoe so that it’d be survived the whole match.
Ashish Nehra had only one pair of a shoe until he made his international debut
“I wore them for the first time in the Ranji Trophy, and there was only one pair that I took with me to play in my first test game in 1999. I still remember stitching the shoe after every inning, so that it can survive the whole test,” said the former batsman. On Talk Show, Akashvani, Nehra speaking to Chopra.
He also recalled the time he had been with his colleagues to drop coach at Delhi Cantonment Station. When the coach asked them to demonstrate the bowling action, he revealed that they would take the stone chips and bowl with that.
“I wasn’t alone. There used to be a lot of us at the railway station who would go to drop sir. He would ask us to show various actions on bowling. I remember, at the station, we’d pick up the stones and bowl them, “Nehra said. Chopra then recalls one of the early cricketing-memories with Nehra.
The coach told me why I was not bowling from you to the very end. I told him that you would like to bowl from the other end.” He took up 44 wickets in matches and the last wickets were in 2004. In 120 ODIs, he took 157 wickets and played 27 T20Is and claimed 34 wickets.
