Vinod Kambli, whose deteriorating health left the entire Indian cricket fraternity worried, has been able to get his life back on track after receiving BCCI’s aid and having successfully recovered from an infection that got him hospitalised a couple of months ago.
It was in December last year that Kambli’s appearance at the unveiling of the Ramakant Achrekar memorial sparked health concerns. The former India batter, whose career took a turn for the worse after a promising start in the early 1990s, remained in the news for the next 60-odd days due to health issues. In an interview. Kambli revealed that he had collapsed and was diagnosed with a urinary infection, and just when he seemed to have recovered from it, he was hospitalised again due to a relapse.
Thankfully, Kambli has stayed good this year, but his condition always reopens the biggest ‘what if’ in Indian cricket. One of the biggest missed opportunities in Indian cricket, Kambli remains its biggest mystery. If only he had handled his distractions well, Kambli could have been a legend. But not everything falls as planned. Kambli always had promise; of course, we know it. But did you know, even before Kambli broke into the Indian team, the news of his talent spread to different shores. When his childhood friend Sachin Tendulkar made history by signing on with Yorkshire, Kambli was already in England, playing for a local club, where he made friends. More than 30 years later, those friends are worried about Kambli and wonder what went wrong.
“As a South Asian, Sachin joining Yorkshire was big news. I’ll tell you what was better, he brought along with him his friend Vinod Kambli, who played in our league. I’ve never-ever met a person who hits the ball as hard as he used to,” Kambli’s friend Nasa Hussain told The Indian Express.
“He just ran down the track and hits the first ball for six, and you think, ‘well okay’. Young man from India, never seen before, never heard of before, and he just comes and smashes it. Subsequently, he went on to score two double-hundreds against England. That was some talent. In today’s day and age, that guy would have been a multi-millionaire.”
Solly Adam, the man responsible for Tendulkar’s contract, was like a father figure to Kambli. So when money was tough – Kambli used to earn 25 pounds for a day – the left-handed batter was suggested by his friends that it won’t be a bad idea to take up a part-time gig. But Kambli turned it down, exuding confidence in his cricket abilities. After a solid season, Kambli had earned a total of 700 pounds, which was handed over to his father. But handling wealth was never the youngster’s cup of tea.
When Kambli spent 700 pounds with his friends
“One day we were sitting, 10 cricketers. All of them had part-time jobs except for Vinod and Sachin. So a cricketer from Mumbai asked Vinod – ‘Since you only earn 25 pound a match, why don’t you work at one of Solly’s places? Kambli didn’t think for a minute, pat came his reply: ‘I and Sachin will make money playing Test cricket, I don’t want to divert my attention doing part-time jobs.’ That was exceptional, what confidence. He was very young, far from being a Test batsman but he had the confidence,” Solly told IE.
“Vinod, when he returned to India, took all the money from his father and spent it with his friends … Vinod never cared about money, nor did he have any respect for commodities,” Solly had written in his book.