The Delhi and District Cricket Association on Saturday said there was no immediate need to shift India cricketer Rishabh Pant from Dehradun to Delhi as his condition was stable following Friday morning’s car crash.
“The doctors here are treating him well. Doctors of the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) are in touch with them. He (Rishabh) has a ligament injury, too, which will take time to heal. There is no urgency to airlift him to Delhi but the BCCI will take the final decision,” DDCA director Shyam Sundar Sharma, who visited Max Hospital in Dehradun in the afternoon, said.
Earlier in the morning, Sharma had said that Rishabh might be flown to Delhi for plastic surgery.
Conflicting accounts emerged of the circumstances leading to the 5.30am accident with Sharma saying Rishabh had told him he had swerved to avoid a pothole.
“Rishabh told me the accident took place when he tried to save his car from going into a pothole on the highway,” Sharma, who was accompanied by Cricket Association of Uttarakhand secretary Mahim Verma and member Amit Kapoor, told reporters.
Uttarakhand director-general of police Ashok Kumar had on Friday said the cricketer had fallen asleep at the wheel and that his Mercedes Benz smashed through the divider’s railings, hit a barrier on the other side and skidded 200 metres before catching fire. Rishabh had scrambled out of the burning car just in time, with minor injuries to his head, back and limbs.
A source in the Uttarakhand regional transport department, whose officials visited the accident spot on Saturday along with forensic experts and National Highway Authority of India officials and checked CCTV footage, gave his version of events.
He said the team found that the NH58 is narrower than usual at the accident spot, where “a semi-circular nullah” forces the road to curve.
“We didn’t see any pothole there. The local people said a mound of sand was there on the roadside but was cleared on Saturday afternoon,” the official said. He said that CCTV footage of the accident didn’t show any mound.
“We found CCTV footage from a dairy on the roadside. The car was speeding and was in the air for two-three seconds (after the impact). It broke the railings of the divider and went to the wrong side of the road. The man in the driver’s seat somehow comes out as the car catches fire,” the official said.
The nullah is called Tansipur-Khera Jatt. The NHAI put up a warning sign a few metres ahead of the curve on Saturday morning.
Hospital sources said the BCCI had asked them not to release any health bulletin on Rishabh, saying the board would itself do so if necessary.
“His brain and spinal MRI were normal on Friday. An MRI test on his legs will be done today to ascertain any internal damage, but there is no fracture,” a hospital source told reporters.
Rishabh was travelling from Delhi to hometown Roorkee in Uttarakhand to celebrate New Year with his mother when the accident happened.
