Opening Doorz
“Celebrating Life”
By Martin D’Souza | Opening Doorz Editorial | April 17, 2026 On October 25, 2025, Shreyas Iyer suffered a life-threatening lacerated spleen with internal bleeding after completing a catch and […]
By Martin D’Souza | Opening Doorz Editorial | April 17, 2026
On October 25, 2025, Shreyas Iyer suffered a life-threatening lacerated spleen with internal bleeding after completing a catch and landing awkwardly during the third ODI against Australia in Sydney.
Six months later, Shreyas Iyer (fielding at long-on) took to the air for a crucial catch. As he fell outside the boundary pads, he transferred the ball to his right hand and threw it to Xavier Bartlett, who was shadowing him.
Bartlett is an Australian!
It was nerve-wracking to watch him land awkwardly once more. I had prayed for his recovery, as surely had many others, including his parents. Yet, he rose to a roar of applause, urging the crowd for more. Remarkably, a Mumbai crowd applauded even though it was a Punjab team moment.
But then, Shreyas is a Mumbai boy.
He could have pretended to run, and, realising it was a difficult catch, could have said, “Screw it, I am not risking my life again.” But when an athlete of Shreyas’s calibre enters the Zone, the conscious, calculating brain (the prefrontal cortex) shuts down.
That could have been the case here. Or, he was showing a middle finger to mortality.
Iyer’s recovery is considered remarkable by medical experts, given that high-grade spleen injuries often require a much longer layoff or even total removal of the organ (splenectomy), which was fortunately avoided in his case. Doctors in Australia performed a minor surgical procedure to arrest the internal bleeding. He remained in the ICU for several days under close observation by specialists from both Sydney and India.
Iyer later revealed that the severity of the injury caused him to lose nearly 7 kg of body weight.
After being discharged on November 1, 2025, he stayed in Sydney for follow-up consultations before returning to India. His rehabilitation focused on regaining lost muscle mass and physical strength, which he described as one of the most challenging phases of his career. By managing the injury conservatively (with minimal intervention), his medical team preserved his immune function.
He successfully returned to competitive cricket in January 2026, three months after the scare, featuring in the domestic Vijay Hazare Trophy and the home ODI series against New Zealand, before leading the Punjab Kings in IPL 2026.
Sports injuries are a given: hamstrings are a nuisance, ACLs are a tragedy, but a life-threatening internal injury is a different beast entirely. Shreyas Iyer did not suffer a sports injury; it was a “see you in the next life” moment. Whether he would ever play again was my first thought once the extent of his injury was out in the open. As a human, your first instinct is survival rather than competitive sport.
Yet, a man who spent days in a Sydney ICU with tubes keeping him anchored to this earth comes back and chooses to land on the very part of his body that had betrayed him months ago.
The injury happened during a dive. From a physio’s perspective, getting him to dive again involves desensitisation. He likely performed controlled falls on soft mats for weeks to prove to his nervous system that his ribs and internal organs were now protected by a new armour of muscle.
Playing intense, competitive cricket means he has made peace with his mortality. Even then, every time he slides in the outfield now, there will be a split-second echo of Sydney 2025, because he isn’t playing tentatively; his strike rate and captaincy decisions suggest he is playing with a second life mentality because he knows exactly how thin the line is between the field and the hospital bed.
The Forced Retirements
Sergio Agüero (Football): One of the most clinical strikers to ever grace the game. Forced to retire in 2021 at age 33 after experiencing chest pains on the pitch. Diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmia, the medical risk was deemed absolute.Fabrice Muamba (Football): Collapsed on the pitch in 2012. His heart stopped for 78 minutes. While he made a full neurological recovery, he never played professional football again on medical advice, retiring at just 24.
Ryan Mason (Football): A rising star for Tottenham and Hull City, Mason suffered a fractured skull in 2017. Despite a year of gruelling rehab and a desperate desire to return, the risks of a secondary impact on his brain were too high. He retired at 26.
Bo Jackson (American Football/Baseball): His NFL career ended at age 29 due to a hip injury (avascular necrosis) sustained during a routine tackle. While he returned to baseball with an artificial hip, his days as an elite, explosive athlete were over.
This is the darkest corner of the sport… these men didn’t get a second life; they gave their last breath to the pitch.
Wilf Slack (1989): A graceful Middlesex and England opener who had suffered unexplained fainting spells on the field four times previously. In January 1989, while playing in The Gambia, Slack collapsed while batting. He was only 34. Despite the previous warning signs, his death remained a haunting mystery to the cricketing world, eventually attributed to a heart condition that went undetected by the technology of the era.
Raman Lamba (1998): A swashbuckling character of Indian cricket, Lamba’s story is the ultimate cautionary tale regarding safety. While fielding at forward short-leg in a club match in Dhaka, he was hit on the temple by a pull shot. He wasn’t wearing a helmet—a common practice for brave close-in fielders at the time. He walked off the field, but internal bleeding (subdural haematoma) took hold. He slipped into a coma and passed away three days later.
Phillip Hughes (2014): The death that changed cricket forever. Just days before his 26th birthday, while batting for South Australia, Hughes was struck on the neck by a bouncer in an unprotected area just below the helmet. The blow caused a vertebral artery dissection, leading to a massive subarachnoid haemorrhage. The image of him leaning on his bat before collapsing remains the most harrowing footage in modern sport. It led to the redesign of helmets (the neck guard) and the implementation of concussion substitutes.
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