New Delhi, Apr 10 (PTI) “You don’t have to tell anyone that you mop floors at a tuition centre. Just come in the morning, do the cleaning and leave. Nobody will know. But I didn’t like the idea,” Rinku Singh had once narrated his ordeal.
These were his father’s words to a young Rinku before he began playing at Under-16 level for Uttar Pradesh.
The family of seven, which included five sons, found father Khanchand’s meagre income from delivering LPG cylinders door-to-door insufficient for financial sustenance and most of them had to do odd jobs to make ends meet.
Life was tough for Rinku and his family.
However, his perseverance kept him going and now he has become a household name after his sensational power hitting in the IPL on Sunday night.
“I am not educated enough to fall back on academics. It is only cricket that could have taken me forward, and it wasn’t just one of the options, but the only option,” his jaws tightened when he spoke to KKR’s official Youtube channel some time back during an interaction.
On Sunday, the stockily-built 25-year-old from Aligarh didn’t just hit his UP teammate Yash Dayal for five consecutive sixes to pull off an incredible IPL win but each and every ball that soared over the ropes at the Narendra Modi Stadium was a statement in itself.
In the last few years, his family has been able to bid poverty good-bye with IPL money, but from now, he will enjoy IPL stardom.
Ian Bishop was on air when Rinku launched into Dayal’s back of the hand slower delivery.
“Rinku Singh, remember the name,” Bishop’s voice was something one would love to hear on a loop.
“My father struggled a lot, I come from a farmer’s family. Every ball that I hit out of the ground was dedicated to the people who sacrificed so much for me,” Rinku said after his match-winning knock.
In the 2021 domestic season, he had sustained a serious knee injury while going for a second run during a game for UP, and underwent a surgery. His father was so depressed that he had stopped eating for a few days before he made him understand that injuries are part of players’ lives.
That Aligarh Boy ========== Aligarh is considered a cultural hub in India with the famous Aligarh Muslim University still having its pride of place among the country’s elite academic institutes.
It has been a house of intellectuals, poets, social reformers, sportspersons (Major Dhyan Chand and Lala Amarnath) for nearly a century and half (148 years).
The biggest link of the city with sport is that it is the birthplace of former India hockey captain Zafar Iqbal.
But Aligarh belongs to Rinku too, whose father would often thrash all his five sons if they tried to give cricket precedence over studies.
“To play proper inter-colony or club matches, you needed to pool in money to buy a leather ball and my father would never give me money. Once I went to play a match in Kanpur and my mother borrowed Rs 1000 from local grocery store to provide for my pocket money,” Rinku had recollected.
“Papa se hum paancho bhaiyon ko bahot maar padhi hai (All five brothers have got lot of thrashing from dad). My father was hawker, delivered LPG cylinders and when he wouldn’t be available for the job, we brothers had to fill in and father would sit with a stick till we hadn’t delivered,” the UP southpaw said.
An emotional Khanchand while talking to
Source: PTI News
