Nicholas Pooran’s incredible tale: from six months in wheelchair after traumatic car accident to smashing sixes in the IPL

When Rishabh Pant was battling physical pain and mental demons on his hospital bed after a near-fatal car accident two years ago, his Lucknow Supergiants colleague Nicholas Pooran would regularly text him with comforting messages. He was not his teammate then, but he could fully relate to the wars waging in Pant’s head. “It’s very challenging. It’s one where no one understands. You go into a place where you’re very depressed, and frustrated,” Pooran would empathise with Pant.

Ten years ago, on the highway near his home, Pooran, LSG’s leading light this season, saw death screaming in front of his eyes like Pant did. Just 19, the buzz around him bubbling after a prolific Under-19 World Cup, he was driving home to Couva, from the training centre in Balmain, when he pulled away to the side so that a car by his side could overtake another and crashed into a sand heap.

Rishabh Pant’s car after an accident in December 2022. (FILE photo) Rishabh Pant’s car after an accident in December 2022. (FILE photo)

He dragged the car back onto the road, before another car knocked him down. “I woke up with the car smashed. Then the ambulance came. I was in so much pain, I just wanted them to knock me out,” he recollected the ordeal to Daily Mail years later.

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When he regained consciousness, he was in the hospital. He tried moving his legs. He could not. They were wrapped in heavy casts. “They were numb. I couldn’t feel them at all. I was on painkillers throughout the 12 days I was in hospital,” he said.

One day, he asked a doctor whether he could play cricket again. He found his answer in the doctor’s grim face. He asked whether he would run again. “Maybe”, the answer came. His heart sinking, he asked whether could walk again. “Yes,” the doctor said, “but without being able to bend the left leg fully.” Any act in the game would require bending, he knows, and he was a wicket-keeper too (modelled on his idol MS Dhoni). His world crumbled.

As much as the bone-crushing pain on his legs—he had ruptured the patellar tendon on his left and fractured his right ankle—he worried about his future. His career was just blossoming, whispers were abound that he was in the mind of the national team’s selectors, and T20 talent-hunters were scouting him.

Twice he went under the surgeon’s knife. A fortnight later he was discharged from the hospital on a wheelchair, his friend for six months. “It was the most difficult six months of life, but it made me a better person,” he admitted. The phase taught him about the fickle nature of life. “I learned to take setbacks with the same composure as success, to take nothing in life for granted,” he would tell Trinidad Guardian. It made him value his girlfriend, Alyssa, whom he later married, even more. It made him god-fearing. “I started to pray a little bit more, started to believe a little bit more, asking for the strength to get through each day.”

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Towards the end of his recovery period, he learned to be self-reliant too. One morning, the board suddenly stopped funding his treatment, though they provided him with the physiotherapist. Then like an “angel”, Kieron Pollard walked into his life. The celebrated all-rounder too was rehabbing from a knee injury and bonded over on the treatment table.

Once they were good enough to stand on both feet, they started going for long walks together, before running and gymming as their bodies healed. Pollard later introduced him to one of the most powerful sports agents around, Eddie Tolchard at Insignia Sports. A year after the accident, he was playing in the Bangladesh Premier League. The cricket board slapped a six-month ban. But Pooran’s convictions remained firm. “You have to believe in your talents, and keep working,” he kept telling himself.

He has so much faith in his virtues that he sounds borderline arrogant when he talks about talent. The night he walloped SRH’s bowlers for a 26-ball 70, he said his lightning bat speed was purely ‘down to his incredible talent”, a natural than acquired gift nurtured over time. Maybe, it was lost in articulation, but the bat-speed has something natural about him.

Bat speed, accentuated by supersonic hands, is a stamp of most great stroke-makers from the Caribbean, including Brian Lara and Viv Richards, two of their greatest. Richie Richardson, before the reflexes slowed him down, had the fastest blade in the country. Pooran carries their off-side grace, a blend of elegance and flamboyance. Watch him cover drive, the unlocking of wrists as he opens the bat face to route the ball through the right side of the cover fielder, the forward glide of his front-foot, the bat’s velcro touch on the ball at the last possible second, he is paying a homage to Carl Hooper and pals.

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The next ball, he could transform to a muscled-hitter in the Pollard mould, by taking his front leg out and clumping the bowler through cow corner with a flat brutal swipe. A short, slender man, he generates immense power with his bat swing and transfer of weight, always getting under the ball when smashing the sixes, which he could all-park around.

He shuttles between the classical and modern schools of Caribbean batting, gleaning elements from both. In his hands, the bat is both a shovel and paintbrush.

Nicholas Pooran in action. (FILE photo) Nicholas Pooran in action. (FILE photo)

Like all of the aforementioned legends, he is a happy six-hitter, the gift that had made him one of the most sought-after names in franchise cricket. This edition, no one has smoked as many sixes as him (15). None has struck the maximums so frequently either (once every 5.5 ball). Only Travis Head has found more fours than Pooran’s 17. That is, he has found the fence or beyond once in every three balls (2.65). Last year, he was the highest six-hitter in T20s (170 in 74 innings) by a huge distance (next was Heinrich Klaassen (105 in 54). He humbly explains the six-smearing mantra: “I just try my best to get in good positions and if it’s there, just time the ball nicely.”

In Pant, he has found a captain who gives him freedom to bat the way he likes too. “The thought was to give freedom to him,” Pant said. “We know what damage he can do down the order. I like that freedom too, but you have got to give someone that charge to go and express yourself.” Pant could say Pooran has always been by his side in tough times. When he was dealing with the trauma of the accident as well as the pressures of leading an underachieving franchise.

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