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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Mint-on-sunday/  Sports injuries and the angles they take
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Sports injuries and the angles they take

Injuries are part and parcel of sport, but some end up changing an athlete's life

Photo: AFPPremium
Photo: AFP

Warning: this essay links to video clips that are painful to watch. Use your discretion.

The knee I injured playing basketball years ago is acting up again. So, if I returned happily to the tennis courts only a few weeks ago, feeling A-ok, I’m now despondent again about not being able to play. And it’s got me thinking about sports injuries—and, at least in my case, their years-long reach.

The first time I hurt my knee was when a tall opponent and I both leaped for a rebound. I prided myself on my rebounding, but he was taller than me—and so our battles for the ball under the basket were always hard-fought. (I like to think I won most of them, but then he probably thinks he did.)

This time, we went up and just as I felt the ball with my fingers, I felt an agonizing pain in my right knee. I crumpled to the ground, screaming in pain, only to find I was nearly on top of him and he was also screaming. Turns out our knees had crashed into each other.

That evening, my knee swelled up like a balloon. Luckily, the balloon didn’t last long. But soon after I returned to the court, I hurt the knee again when I turned to pass a defender and skate in for a layup. Agonizing pain again.

I ended up on crutches for a month and despite a fair amount of therapy, I eventually had to choose: tennis or basketball? I chose the racquet game. And while I have been able to play for many years, the knee has occasionally misbehaved. Still, never more so than this year.

And yes, it’s got me thinking about sports injuries. But ones that far more accomplished athletes than me have suffered and, sometimes, come back from.

Like 1991 Wimbledon champion Michael Stich. The German is a tall man with a game that was all power, grace and consummate volleys. He beat both Stefan Edberg and Boris Becker en route to that 1991 Wimbledon title, which is saying something because those two had played the three previous finals.

Perhaps because Stich wasn’t quite as hungry as his contemporaries were, he never reached that pinnacle again. But still, he had a game that was always a joy to watch.

In October 1995, he’s playing Todd Woodbridge in the quarterfinals of a tournament in Vienna. At one point, Woodbridge slices a backhand dropshot that angles sharply over the net.

Stich is ready for it, though, and races to his left sideline to reach the ball. He actually gets there in time. But just as his racquet touches the ball, his left foot seems to stop on the surface of the court instead of sliding forward. He falls to the ground in obvious, serious pain, one hand on that leg, the other seeming to beg for help.

In slow motion, the sequence is nearly impossible to watch without a rising tide of queasiness. His left ankle buckles at an angle you cannot imagine any part of anyone’s body taking on.

It was such a ghastly injury that I could not imagine Stich would ever recover from it. And yet, it’s a tribute both to his fitness and to the treatment he got that he was back playing top-flight tennis by early 1996. In fact, he won a tournament in February that year, and in June even reached the final of the French Open.

Then there’s the news of Mohammed Amir that I read about minutes before starting on this essay.

Pakistan’s wondrous fast bowling talent was, famously, banned from the game for five years for spot-fixing in a Test in England in 2010. He’s back playing now, having served his time. While he hasn’t quite shown fans the remarkable talent of his pre-ban youth, he has done enough to be a fixture in the Pakistan team for now.

And for now, Pakistan is playing Australia in a Test in Brisbane. On Thursday, the first day, Amir bowled with skill and pace for much of the day. After a remarkable run of 39 balls without a run taken off him, he chased a shot from Peter Handscomb.

As he tried to slide to intercept the ball, his right knee dug hard into the turf and he collapsed, clearly in great pain.

(Many watching were reminded of what happened to England fast bowler Simon Jones on the same ground in a 2002 Test: sliding to stop a ball headed to the boundary, his right knee twisted—again, at an angle no part of anyone’s body should take on.)

Amir was helped off the field. But, amazingly, he was back on in about half an hour, and even took the new ball for Pakistan shortly afterwards, bowling now with even greater sting. Yet again, a tribute to fitness and treatment.

And then there’s Joe Theismann. A stellar quarterback with the Washington Redskins in the National Football League (NFL), Theismann led the team to a Super Bowl triumph in early 1983, and was the league’s Most Valuable Player that year.

Two years later, the Redskins were playing the New York Giants on a Monday night, and this fan of the Redskins was glued to the box that masqueraded as my TV, watching the game.

At one point, Theismann readied to pass the ball forward. Lawrence Taylor of the Giants, acknowledged as one of the best defenders in the NFL, drove into him from behind, snapping Theismann’s lower right leg “like a breadstick"—as Theismann himself later described it.

Again, the video of the episode is unbearable to watch.

The Washington Post called it “The Hit That No One Who Saw It Can Ever Forget", and certainly I have never forgotten it in these 31 years.

The same remark I have made twice above about angles and body parts holds. I mean, as he lay there, Theismann’s lower leg formed a 45 degree angle. It hurts simply to write those words. I can’t begin to comprehend the pain Theismann felt.

His bones healed, but his right leg stayed shorter than the left. And so, unlike Amir and Stich and Jones, Theismann never returned to his sport. His football career ended at that one terrible moment.

All of which serves to put my own injury troubles—much as I bemoan them—in perspective. No, not one body part of mine has ever formed those horrific angles.

Once a computer scientist, Dilip D’Souza now lives in Mumbai and writes for his dinners. His latest book is Jukebox Mathemagic: Always One More Dance.

His Twitter handle is @DeathEndsFun

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Published: 17 Dec 2016, 11:21 PM IST
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