Welcome to the Tymal Mills story, the man who was given a lifeline when doctors told him he could continue to play cricket only if he restricted himself to bowling around four overs a day
Royal Challengers Bangalore’s English cricketer Tymal Mills during a practice session in Bangalore yesterday. Pic/PTI
Bangalore: Imagine being told at 22 that it was best to retire from the sport one loved most, give up a promising career and perhaps go back to selling vegetables, something he did as a kid to earn some pocket money.
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Then imagine the same gent at 24 getting picked to play for an IPL team and being paid R12 crore for the season. Welcome to the Tymal Mills story, the man who was given a lifeline when doctors told him he could continue to play cricket only if he restricted himself to bowling around four overs a day. He thus became a specialist T20 player allowing for a congenital back condition to be kept in check while he travelled around the world playing in the T20 leagues and for the England national side.
Mills was at the RCB nets yesterday getting his first feel of the IPL and talk naturally veered around to how he copes with his medically enforced restrictions.
“It gives me no problem day to day,” he said of his back. “Only change I have to make is the amount of deliveries I have to bowl. For the last two years I have focussed on only T20 cricket and I haven’t had recurrence of my back injury. Of course, as all bowlers do, I picked up other injuries like knee, ankle but I come here in good health,” said Mills.
Stating that he was looking forward to the Chinnaswamy Stadium crowd cheering for him rather than opposing him (as it happened during the recent India-England T20 International), Mills was clear that the big money paid for him or the fact that he would be stepping in for Mitchell Starc won’t affect him.
“I am not putting pressure on myself because of the money that RCBâÂÂÂu00c2u0080ÂÂÂu00c2u0088is paying me. If you do that, then you are setting yourself up to fail. I have found a nice formula for myself. I understand you are not always going to do well. T20 is a game which is so up and down. In one game you can take four for 10 and then go none for 50 in the next. You got to be able to temper your expectations and make sure you are level headed,” he said.
For someone who can bowl fast regularly, Mills, a left-arm pacer, possesses one of the better slower ones in the game.
“I have used it (slower ball) all winter playing in PSL, Big Bash and before that in New Zealand and Chittagong. On these slower surfaces, you got to change your pace because the batsmen are so good these days. If they are confident how you are going to bowl and where you are going to bowl then they are going to hit you for sixes,” said Mills.
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