Nirmal kumar

The Melbourne Cricket Ground: The Melbourne Cricket Ground held its breath in palpable tension as Nitish Kumar Reddy, batting at 99 not out, was to face the third ball of the 115th over from Scott Boland on Saturday. Standing in the stands, his father Mutyalu was remembering God earnestly.

Not far away, his mother, Manasa, and sister, Tejaswi, were also praying. Back in India, his coaches, Nirmal Kumar in Ranchi and CD Thomson in Hyderabad, were extremely tense as they watched the action from their respective TV screens.

The whole situation resembled a tense scene from a Telugu movie potboiler - the hero about to get a major win, and his family anxiously hoping for it to happen.