Mumbai health workers excel in different ball game

Playing for the team since 2003, Surve is used to the long process of putting on protective gear; at Mumbai’s Shivaji Park, he’s better known as the captain and No 3 batsman of the Raheja Hospital’s cricket team.

Chetan Surve, 43, is a Infectious Control Assistant, at Mumbai’s SL Raheja Hospital, tasked with a critical function—he disinfects the route a Covid-19 patient takes on admission. “There’s a separate entry gate and a separate lift,” Surve said. “The lift doesn’t stop anywhere; it goes straight to the floor (of the Covid ward). There is no entry for anybody on that floor. I disinfect the lift and the whole area.”

Chetan Surve, Raheja hospital captain. (Special Arrangement)

Playing for the team since 2003, Surve is used to the long process of putting on protective gear; at Mumbai’s Shivaji Park, he’s better known as the captain and No 3 batsman of the Raheja Hospital’s cricket team. At the maidan it was groin guard, thigh pads, pads, elbow guard, helmet. Now it’s long apron, cap, mask, goggles, gloves, and shoe cover—in short, the PPE. It takes him around 15 minutes to get into gear. Once he is done, he posts a photo on a group on WhatsApp. Almost immediately, the group comes to life, posting messages of encouragement and motivation. This is where the many amateur cricketers working at Mumbai hospitals keep in touch with each other, now that matches and practice sessions have stopped.

The group has members from all 16 teams that play in the Girnar Inter-Hospital Cricket Tournament, a competition recognized by the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA); they are club cricketers who work in hospitals in various capacities, from ward boys to pharmacists to administrators. These are all hospitals at the forefront of Mumbai’s battle against the pandemic.

Surve has experience on his side—he has been working at the hospital’s infectious diseases ward for the past decade—and said that the key to efficient functioning is not to be afraid of the disease.

“If you start worrying about catching the infection, then you won’t be able to do anything,” he said. “The thinking has to be positive. The biggest satisfaction is to see the patient recover and get discharged.”

This week, he is on night shift, from 8 pm to 8 am. He has not gone back home to the distant suburb of Panvel, almost 50km from the hospital in Mahim, in many weeks since the trains are not running.

“The group members have gotten closer in these times,” says Hinduja Hospital’s Anil Bayekar, who is the joint secretary of the inter-hospital tournament and an executive secretary to one of the hospital’s directors. “All our sportspersons at Hinduja are on duty.”

Hinduja fields the most dominant team in the inter-hospital tournament, having won the title 18 times in the competition’s 25-year existence. This year, the cricketers don’t expect the tournament will be held. The last action that the Hinduja team saw before the pandemic put a stop to all sports was a Times Shield match on March 7.

Hinduja’s middle-order batsman Vishal Patil, a prolific scorer with 20 club level centuries to his name, is part of the team screening patients at the hospital for the virus.

“We are extremely dedicated to this task and have no fear,” Patil says.

The team from Lilavati Hospital, the defending champions of the inter-hospital tournament, has four players now working in the hospital’s Covid-19 ward, which currently houses around 25 patients.

“Once you don the PPE kit, you are required to work five to six hours at a stretch,” said one of the players who did not want to be identified. “There is no break because it is a sterile kit and if you come out, you can’t go in with the same kit.”

A bit like playing on a vicious pitch and carrying your bat through the day.