"…without sleeping a wink" - Ian Bishop reminisces his international debut

Has it ever happened to you that on the first day of achieving something you'd worked towards for years, you got so excited that you ended up fumbling a thing or two?

Well, that's the fun part of chasing dreams - even the greats falter at the sheer anticipation of doing something incredible. One of the icons of the commentary box, and a terrific cricketer in his own right, Ian Bishop opened up on how he found out he'd been selected to play for West Indies, and what followed.

Talking on the Big Basket presents RCB Podcast, Bishop said, "Remember the first day I got selected was, I was taking up another contract in 1988 after a domestic senior season at home, and I was going up north. Got on the flight, got to London, jumped on the bus to go up north, got there, came off the bus, and the guys on the club came to meet me, and he said, Mr. Bishop, I'm sorry, you're not going to be playing for us this year. I thought, what? Just come off the bus. What's going on? He said, you've just been selected for the West Indies team."

Expressing his emotions, Bishop said, "I didn't see that coming, so I was in shock. And then he took me to the apartment where I was supposed to be staying, and I promise you, it must have been about five o'clock in the afternoon. I watched the sun go down, and I watched the sun come back up without sleeping a wink, because that way I was going to be with Jeffrey Dujon, Malcolm Marshall, Gordon Greenidge, and all of that."

Reflecting on the sacred day of his international debut, Bishop added, "And when I finally, after a couple of weeks in the tour, made my international debut, I remember at Headingley, I was fielding at fine leg, and I dive for a ball. That was the second game I played. And the ball was way over there, and I started diving from here, because I was so nervous. I wanted to show Richards that I was keen, and I missed the ball by about 10 yards. So that was my sort of early experience."