Back in 2016, Shikhar Dhawan, the former Indian cricketer, put everything on the line to keep his place in the Test team. During a match against New Zealand, he got hit on the arm by a ball from Trent Boult, which broke his arm. Despite the pain, he kept playing to show he belonged there.
Last August, he announced that he was retiring from international cricket after being away from the game for a while. Over his career, Dhawan played 34 Tests, 167 ODIs, and 68 T20Is, racking up over 10,000 runs. But it wasn’t an easy ride. In 2016, he had to fight hard to stay on the national team, even with a serious injury.
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This all went down during the second Test in Kolkata. Dhawan only managed to score 1 run in the first innings, and then, in the second, he was hit on the arm again by Boult. Even though his arm was broken, he managed to score about 17 runs. On Ranveer Allahbadia’s YouTube show ‘Taakat’, Dhawan opened up about how hard that period was for him. He said he felt desperate and knew that if he didn’t score, he could lose his spot in the team.
I knew if I sat out, I’d be done for, Dhawan recalled. So I thought, I’m going to play through this. It was a tough choice, but I played and ended up scoring around 15-20 runs before getting dropped from the Test team. This was a really challenging time for him, especially since he was under a lot of pressure to perform.
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A few years later, Dhawan wasn’t in the Test team anymore, but his impact on Indian cricket is still felt. There was also that amazing moment during the 2019 World Cup against Australia, where he played through a broken thumb and scored 117 runs off 109 balls at The Oval. His determination shone through, making it one of India’s most memorable ODI innings, even if his injury meant he couldn’t play the rest of the tournament.
