Small ambitions

When he started cricket, Mishra only had a small ambition — to somehow play for the state so that he could bag a Grade IV Railway job on sports quota and secure a future. “I had seen an India potential in him. But he seemed to be looking only at that Railway job,” recalls his coach Bharadwaj, admitting that they have had many laughs over it since then.

Skipper’s faith

When talk veers to yesterday’s match against Deccan Chargers, Mishra blushes slightly, admitting it didn’t occur to him immediately that he had got a hat-trick. “The only thing I thought of was the equation. And then it suddenly struck me: ‘God, I got a hat-trick!’

“The credit goes to Virubhai who showed confidence in me in a format where skippers rarely like to play spinners. He asked me before the penultimate over if I would bowl the last one. He simply tossed the ball to me and said ‘I know you can win us the match’. This hat-trick is for Viru alone,” he says.

Just 25 and Mishra has seen it all: hopes, frustration and self-doubt... and triumph again. More than anything, Mishra has answered a whole lot of questions, to himself, and to his critics.