A bereaved Vishnu Solanki has decided to stay on with the team and play the third Ranji Trophy game for Baroda despite suffering twin tragedies. The last few weeks has been extremely difficult for Solanki as close on the heels of losing his new-born daughter, he also lost his ailing father on Sunday.

“He (Vishnu) will be playing the last match. He is not coming back. He is staying with the team,” Baroda Cricket Association (BCA) secretary Ajit Lele said on Monday.

The 29-year-old had become a father on February 10 but the very next day his baby girl died. However, Solanki showed nerves of steel as he returned to play for Baroda and struck 104 against Chandigarh only to get the news of his father’s death on the final day.

“When his daughter passed away, he came back but missed the first match, because again he had to undergo a three-day quarantine. But this time he stayed back,” added another senior BCA official. Baroda will take on Hyderabad in their last Elite Group B game at the Vikash cricket ground in Bhubaneswar on March 3.

The batter had made headlines in the 2020-21 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy when he hit 16 runs off the final three balls of the quarter final to stun Haryana in a photo finish. He was ready for the Ranji Trophy, which had returned after a hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, Solanki was woken up close to midnight on February 11 by the Baroda team manager Dharmendra Arothe, who told the player that his day-old daughter had died. A distraught Solanki packed his bags and flew back home. He missed Baroda’s match against Bengal, which was played between February 16 and 19.

Solanki returned to Cuttack on February 17 to prepare for Baroda’s second match, against Chandigarh. Having swallowed the pain of his newborn’s death, Solanki showed even greater powers of resilience by scoring an unbeaten 103 at the end of the second day of the match.

“He said he had dedicated the century to his daughter,” team manager Arothe told ESPNcricinfo on February 25.

Then, on Sunday Arothe received the news of Solanki’s father’s death. With the match, in its final day, starting at 8.45am, Arothe relayed the information initially to Baroda captain Kedar Devdhar via Ninad Rathwa, the 12th man.

Chandigarh and Baroda wore black arm bands on Sunday. The match referee Amit Pathak also gave Solanki permission to use the phone in the dressing room to talk with his family.