Disturbed by a video in which he's struggling to walk, Couto brothers paid a visit to former India batsman
MUMBAI: A video which went viral recently, in which former India cricket star Vinod Kambli is struggling to walk, left many cricket fans disturbed. Deeply concerned by Kambli's condition, which hasn't been great for a few years now, two of his close, old cricketing friends - school classmate Ricky and his brother, First-Class umpire Marcus Couto visited the 52-year-old at his fifth floor flat at the Jewel Cooperative Society in Bandra on Thursday.
Much to Coutos' and Kambli's many well-wishers' relief, the former left-handed batsman, who played 17 Tests (1084 runs) and 104 ODIs (2477 runs) told them that he's "fit and fine."
In a video that they made at his fifth floor flat at the Jewel Cooperative Society flat (where many former Mumbai and India cricketers reside), Kambli, when quizzed by Marcus about his condition, said: "I'm good," giving a thumbs-up sign. "By the grace of God, I'm surviving. I'm fit and fine. I'm ready to bat at No 3 (jokingly). I'll hit the spinners outside the ground, like we used to play at Shivaji Park!"
The Couto brothers enjoyed a great time at the Kambli residence. Describing their emotional meeting, Marcus said, "We went to meet him for 10 minutes but ended up being with him for nearly five hours. While spending almost the entire day with his family, we had home-cooked lunch and tea, all made lovingly by his wife Andrea."
"We reminisced about some of his best knocks- facing the fearsome West Indies quicks in the 1990s, how he attacked Shane Warne (at Sharjah in 1994), and listened to songs. He was in a jolly mood throughout our stay in his house and regaled us by singing old Hindi movie songs! While he has a few health issues, he didn't appear to be as fat as he's looking in the video, and looked in decent shape. He was eating well too. He told us: 'I am fine and fit.' When we asked him about the video, he said that it was from a few weeks ago. At that time, he had gone down to buy something, and suddenly felt dizzy, but it wasn't as if he was drunk or something," the 53-year-old explained.
"He was giving batting tips to his son, Cristiano, who is also a left-handed batter like his father. Andrea, meanwhile, was helping out the kids with their homework," said Marcus. The duo then made Kambli speak to several of his friends, including former teammate Abey Kuruvilla, who is now BCCI GM, Ajinkya Naik, the president of the Mumbai Cricket Association and former Mumbai captain Shishir Hattangadi.
"There was some leakage from the ceiling of his flat, but the family seems to have sportingly adjusted to that trouble," Marcus revealed.
Incidentally, it was Marcus who played a massive role in telling the world about the famed 664-run partnership between Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli in 1988. Soon after that partnership, Marcus approached illustrious statisticians Anandji Dossa and Sudhir Vaidya, before another noted statistician, Mohandas Menon eventually established that it was a world record partnership.
Ironically, Marcus' brother Ricky, who too paid a visit to Kambli on Thursday, was the 12th man for the Shardashram Vidyamandir school team, for whom Tendulkar and Kambli had that record partnership, in that match.
