A trip down memory lane for Ravi Shastri ahead of Wellington Test

XtraTime Web Desk: The Indian cricket team will face New Zealand in the two-match Test series starting from Friday at the Basin Reserve in Wellington. One can say it as a coincident but the two teams had faced each other at the same venue and on same day in 1981. And that game was the first match of Indian cricket team’s head coach Ravi Shastri. In an interview for BCCI with Cheteshwar Pujara, Shastri went down memory lane to talk about his experience which he lived 39 years back.

“I would have never believed I would come to the same ground, same venue, playing against the same opposition,” Shastri tells Pujara in the video.

“I went into the dressing room, it’s the same dressing room. Nothing has changed. The Basin Reserve, I made my debut here 39 years ago. I wouldn’t have believed it. To the day, 21st February, I’d be back after 39 years,” he says.

Asked about how he landed in New Zealand a day before the match, Shastri reveals how he went straight to the hotel and then to the ground the next morning for the game.

“I’ll never forget that. I reached New Zealand at about 9:30 in the night. The late Bapu Nadkarni came to fetch me at the airport. The Indian team was at the high commission for their official do,” Shastri narrates in the video.

“I went straight to the hotel and my roommate was Dilip (Vengsarkar) but there was no one in the room so I crashed out. Next morning, Sunny (Sunil Gavaskar) lost the toss, we were put in to field and there you were, you were playing the game and you were playing straight away,” he says.

Ravi Shastri impressed with the ball on his debut, picking up six wickets over two innings even as India went on to lose the match by 62 runs.

“I think I was nervous. I was definitely nervous as one would imagine anyone playing his first game, but I bowled tidily and I got one wicket – of Jeremy Coney – and that got my confidence going,” he says.

“Conditions were totally different from what you were used to playing in India or anywhere else in the world because there were blustering winds. It was a very very cold day. Thanks to Polly Umrigar’s sweater. I didn’t even have my own sweater,” Shastri recalls.