Bollywood’s philosophical look at living the moment and the temporary high of this unpredictable would have provided a perfect background score at a TNCA function on the match eve where Balaji — nursing a career-threatening stress fracture of the back — sat just behind Team India physio John Gloster and the new-kid-on-the-pace-block S Sreesanth.

Watching the just healed pacers Zaheer Khan and Ajit Agarkar sitting in the front row and remembering the missing faces of Irfan Pathan, Munaf Patel and Ashish Nehra, it seemed Balaji's ring tone was more like the signature tune of the fitness-fragile India pace department.

Balaji's famous toothy smile is there, his thick mop of hair still needs to be regimented regularly but a stress fracture of the back means he has to be in casuals and sit behind the Men in Blue.

While Sreesanth was busy obliging the autograph hunters, the local boy was more keen to talk to Gloster. Despite playing his last international match in 2005 and missing the entire domestic season this year, the local boy still attracts attention but Balaji refuses to entertain requests.

“Just like that I have stopped signing autographs these days,” he says as he gives a faint glimpse of that famous toothpaste-add grin. These days he is more pre-occupied with the latest injury problem. After his osteitis pubis — a part of the abdomen that connects four muscles — was healed, the latest scare has made Balaji skeptic. “Actually I myself have no idea about the extent of my injury. It is all very confusing and certainly frustrating,” he says.

But there are some around who are ready to give a time frame. Dr H Natarajan, the joint secretary of TNCA, says that “Balaji would need at least six months to take a ball in his hand and bowl. The stress fracture of the back has been detected and he will go for surgery soon. He is in constant touch with Gloster and we will decide if he needs to go abroad or get it done here,” he says.

Tamil Nadu selector and the former member of the national selection committee V B Chandrashekhar rounds the fingers of both his hands and with click-sound talks about the slit spine. “It is really sad and right now no one has any idea when he can return. A bright career hindered by injury is truly tragic,” he says.

Many around here even question the way Balaji has been handled but since it is a touchy issue the anonymity factor creeps in. “The problem with him is the action. Maybe, he will be healed but if he sticks to the same action he will be injured again. A proper rehabilitation is what he needs. But this is a scare certainly and chances are we might never ever see the Balaji of the old,” says someone who is in the know of things.

Making the issue more complex is a comment by TNCA official Natarajan. “At times the lure of stardom and the amount of money involved in the game makes the cricketers neglect their injuries. His stress fracture could have been the result of that,” he says taking an unsympathetic view of the entire issue. And that in some ways gives an entire different meaning to the Kishore classic.