Stress fracture the darkest hour in my life, confesses Lakshmipathy Balaji

Stress fracture the darkest hour in my life, confesses Lakshmipathy Balaji

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Former Indian speedster Lakshmipathy Balaji, who suffered a major stress fracture in 2005, has revealed that the injury was the darkest phase of his career. Balaji further revealed that the injury went undiagnosed for a good year, due to which it got exaggerated, piling more misery on the pacer.

After an underwhelming start to his international career - conceding 44 off just 4 overs on his ODI debut and taking a solitary wicket in his two Test matches - Lakshmipathy Balaji had his breakthrough versus Pakistan in 2004, across formats. The then 23-year-old made heads turn with his pace and his ability to extravagantly move the ball both ways. At that point in time, when there was a scarcity of pacers in the country, it looked like the Tamil Nadu pacer was going to be a certainty in the XI for years to come. 

However, one year post the breakthrough tour, Balaji would go on to sustain a major stress fracture in his lower back, an injury that all but effectively ended his international career. Balaji would go on to play just 6 more matches for the country post his fracture, 5 of which were T20 Internationals, with him losing his pace and movement owing to the magnitude of the injury.

Ironically enough, the very same Pakistan tour where Balaji got his breakthrough was the one where initial signs of a potential stress fracture started creeping in. Despite the pain, the Tamil Nadu pacer soldiered on. However, the pain, by his own admission, got unbearable during the 2004 Champions Trophy in September, six months after the initial signs started popping out. The 38-year-old reflected on his injury and revealed how he first got to know that he might be dealing with a major injury.

“In 2004, I was playing in Pakistan. Suddenly, for the first time out of my six years of playing cricket,  I felt pain. There was even one season where I played around 28 first-class matches which included international matches, India A stints and first-class matches. That’s when I felt there was a slight weakness in my back and there was stiffness and it was unusual,” Balaji revealed at the Global Sports Injury Conclave (GSIC) event in Bengaluru on Saturday.

“Normally, I’m the kind of bowler who enjoys bowling. I sometimes end up bowling around 30 overs in a first-class game, because that’s how it is in Indian cricket - if you’re a primary bowler, you do the maximum load. The pain still wasn’t that bad, it didn’t stop me from bowling, but we then played a Champions Trophy in September. That’s when I really exaggerated the injury and I literally collapsed. I couldn’t stand and the morning stifness, in specific, was the worst,” he added.

The problem for Balaji, however, was not that the injury surfaced in the first place. It was the fact that it went undetected for a long time, meaning he exaggerated it to an unimaginable extent, almost to the point of no return. The stress fracture kept him out of action for more than a year, and it wasn’t until 2009 that Balaji represented India again. The pacer described this forgettable period as the darkest phase of his career.  

“A lot of scans were not able to exactly detect the problem. But it was just the starting point. We even did a 34-slide CT scan, yet we missed it. The first three months I somehow managed to play, after which I was sent to Australia to diagnose the problem. And the bone scans showed that there was a fracture.

"It took some time to heal. And when I tried to bowl, the cracks re-opened once again.  I played Irani Trophy and a lot of other tournaments in-between and the problem dragged on for almost a year. The injury was the darkest hour of my life. In fact, if you ask any sportsperson what the darkest hour in their life is, they’d give the same answer: not certain about what the future holds for them.” 

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