A member of Railways’ two Ranji Trophy triumphs, Tejinder Pal Singh has many good memories of the time spent at the Karnail Singh Stadium. Now back on home ground after a two-year gap — he had signed up with the Indian Cricket League (ICL) — the middle-order batsman didn’t take long to settle down.

And while he has been a common figure in domestic cricket for long, things are happening fast for the Northern Railway employee ever since his comeback. The most important of them being a one-year deal offered by the Mumbai Indians franchise of the Indian Premier League.

“I signed for the Mumbai Indians three weeks back. Harbhajan Singh played a big role in the signing,” said the left-hander.

Apart from the new deal with IPL, however, there isn’t much that has changed for Singh. Though the conditions at Karnail Singh Stadium have changed in the time he defected to the ICL bandwagon in 2007 — the pitch has been re-laid, although its nature remains the same slow and low — it didn’t take long for Singh to settle back among familiar surroundings and former Railways team mates during the ongoing Ranji Trophy trials in the Capital. The recent rainfall left the track damp and difficult for batsmen but it didn’t matter to Singh, who was sublime throughout his fifteen minutes in the middle.

“I have played here for eight straight years, so I knew how to tackle it. And, in any case, as batsmen we are supposed to be able to play on all kind of surfaces; therefore it’s not all that great as many of us here were making it out to be,” he told Sportline on Tuesday.

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