'I used to get the shoe stitched after each innings' - Ashish Nehra remembers his debut Test match

Ashish Nehra made his Test debut in 1999 in Sri Lanka. Former Sri Lankan captain Marvan Atapattu was his first victim. Though Nehra didn’t have a huge Test career, he surely left an impact with the red cherry in his hand. Recently, during an interaction with his former Delhi and India teammate, Aakash Chopra, the left-arm pacer talked about his Test debut.

Talking about his initial days in international cricket, Nehra said that he had only one pair of shoes which he used during the Ranji Trophy and also in his Test debut. The former pacer revealed that he would stitch the shoe after each innings so that it survived the entire match.

Ashish Nehra had only one pair of shoe until he made his international debut

“I wore them for the first time in Ranji Trophy and had only one pair which I took them with me to play in my first Test match in 1999. I still remember I used to get the shoe stitched after each innings and that is how it survived the entire Test,” Nehra told Chopra on the ex-batsman’s talk show, Aakashvani.

The 41-year-old also recalled a time when he would go to drop the coach at the Delhi Cantonment station with his teammates. He revealed that when the coach asked them to show the bowling action, they would pick up stone chips and bowl with that.

“I wasn’t alone. There used to be a bunch of us who would go to drop sir at the railway station. He would ask us to show him different bowling actions. I remember we would pick up the stones at the station and bowl with them,” Nehra said. Chopra then reminded Nehra of one of the early memories of their cricketing times.

“You remember we had to bowl into the wind and against the wind? The coach asked me why I didn’t bowl you from that end. I told him that you wanted to bowl from the other end,” Chopra said. Ashish Nehra finally bid goodbye to international cricket in 2017. He picked up 44 wickets in his 17 Test matches, last of which came in 2004. In 120 ODIs, he had 157 wickets and also played 27 T20Is picking up 34 wickets.