Friend Sachin's healing touch

Having been Sachin Tendulkar’s roommate as a 15-year-old schoolboy, Dalbir Singh should have been in the news for his exploits on the cricket field.

But a ghastly motorcycle accident in 2002 ended the sporting career of this Gandhinagar all-rounder. And he hit the headlines recently only after police officials rescued him from his tormenting wife Rajvinder Kaur who had allegedly kept him locked up in a small room in an apartment near InfoCity for a year.

While Dalbir totally dropped off the radar, Sachin went on to become the god of Indian cricket. But the god did not forget his old friend with whom he practised and played boyish pranks. Sachin fully sponsored Dalbir’s hip replacement surgery which he underwent at Shalby Hospitals on Wednesday.

The master blaster, who came to Ahmedabad for a promotional event, even visited his friend in hospital after the surgery. Dalbir was referred to Shalby by Board of Control for Cricket in India’s (BCCI) medical advisor Anant Joshi at Sachin’s insistence. The 37-year-old Dalbir was a promising all-rounder in the domestic scenario. In 2002, Dalbir’s motorcycle collided with a tanker which left him in coma for eight months after suffering multiple brain injuries and he even lost the power to walk.

When Sachin learnt about Dalbir’s condition, he got in touch with him and got Joshi involved. "Dalbir Singh had a serious accident leading to head injury few years back due to which he was on a prolonged dose of steroids," hospital sources said. "This resulted in loss of blood supply to the hip bone. The surgery lasted two hours." Sachin spent about 10 minutes with Dalbir before catching a flight to Mumbai.