5 instances when cricketers survived near death experiences

Cricketers play a high profile sport which has never remained a stranger to controversy for long. The national teams have cult followings and the players are worshipped. This makes us forget that the players are not invincible, they are mortals just like us. And they have had close brushes with death as well.Here are five instances when cricketers have survived near death experiences:

#5 Jesse Ryder assaulted in a bar

Jesse Ryder was hit over the head

New Zealand cricketer Jesse Ryder is no stranger to controversies. He's been accused of late night drinking, having his hand slashed by having it stuck through a toilet window and of verbally abusing his team manager, Dave Currie. The incident at the Christchurch bar almost ended his life though.

Reports state that Ryder got into an altercation with four men, and a brawl ensued spreading from the bar into the parking lot of a restaurant across the street.

Ryder himself recollects that "Someone told me I'd been jumped, hit from behind and had whacked my head.'' He stated that he has no memory of anything besides going to a bar with his Wellington teammates.

Later two men were charged with assault on Ryder. Ryder said "I look back and think I am lucky not to be dead. It was just black. I just woke up all of a sudden after 56 hours or so, I think it was, just bang, like that. I remember waking up and trying to pull the tube out of my throat and then someone had to stop me from doing that.

#4 Muttiah Muralitharan narrowly misses the tsunami

Muttiah Muralitharan had a close shave with the tsunami

Muttiah Muralitharan had a narrow death experience with the tsunamis which wrecked havoc in south Asia and claimed over 21,000 lives.

Muralitharan was in the southern coastal city of Galle with his manager Kushil Gunasekera. They were handing out bats to underprivileged children. They had driven out of town to distribute the bats. As they lef their town, the waves hit soon after.

"I missed the wave by 20 minutes," Muralitharan said. "I had only just left Galle so I am very lucky to be alive. The wave was over 20 feet [six metres] high and it went two kilometres inland. A lot of our cricketers are from there and we don't know how their families are. My manager barely survived. His house is gone. Galle is totally under water and a lot of people are missing or dead. There are people everywhere screaming."

This was the fifth largest earthquake in the past 100 years. Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Thailand, the Maldives, Malaysia and the Andaman Islands were also affected.

"Something like this has never happened to my country," he said. I had just been there giving poor children some bats. I had finished doing that and was driving out of Galle when this happened. There was no warning. It is a very, very bad situation.

#3 Sri Lanka\'s team bus attacked

The driver helped save lives that day

On 4 March 2009 a team bus carrying Sri Lankan players was fired upon by 10-12 gunmen at the Liberty Square roundabout in Lahore, as they were on their way to Gaddafi stadium. Six members of the Sri Lankan team were injured in the incident. Six Pakistani policemen and two civilians were also killed.

Mahela Jayawardene said "The bus came under attack as we were driving to the stadium, the gunmen targeted the wheels of the bus first and then the bus. We all dived to the floor to take cover. About five players have been injured and also Paul Farbrace [a member of the support staff]

The attackers fired a rocket which missed the bus, then threw grenades underneath which failed to explode. Jayawardene said We had an amazing driver who just kept driving the bus straight through all of that to the ground and thats probably what saved us."

The team was scheduled to play the third day of the second Test against Pakistan. The Lahore Test was called off. Two players, Samaraweera and Paranavitana were severely injured in the attack.

#2 Fanie De Villiers survives an explosion

Fanie De Villiers almost turned blind

Fanie De Villiers served in the army when he nearly had his eyes burnt. Had he been a step closer to the explosion he may have lost his life. Of the incident he has said "I nearly lost my eyes in the army. I was posted in the sports fields. These guys dropped off some lime that they use in building roads, and that lime when it touches water becomes a hard, solid thing, and it becomes heated up. The guys that were working there threw it in a big drum, and it started boiling and cooking and swelled up and blew. I was probably four metres from it. It hit me in the eyes. I was blind for six-seven days.

They literally tied me to a bed, held me upside down and threw water into my eyes. For three hours, four hours. It was so sore I couldn't close my eyes, I couldn't open my eyes. It's amazing how you can go through that. Today if I close my eyes I can see a lot of spots because of it. I could have been completely blind. There are eight layers in the eye, and they said six of them were burnt off.

#1 Sachin Tendulkar narrowly escapes trains

Sachin was just a kid at the time

We have covered the hardships Sachin faced growing up and pursuing his passion for cricket. As a kid he used to cross railway tracks, and had a close call which put a stop to that habit.

Sachin said "Right from the age of 11, I travelled by trains in Mumbai. When I travelled I had a kit-bag. I have also experienced jostling, being pushed in and out of trains, these experiences will stay with me,”.

“In school, I had gone to Vile Parle to a friend’s place. We, five or six boys, had practiced in the morning and had gone to his place for lunch. Then we decided to watch a movie. After watching the movie, we got late for practice and hence we decided to cross railway tracks and go to the platform and board the train at Dadar.”

“While crossing the tracks, halfway, we realised that trains were coming fast on all the tracks. We ended up crouching on our knees in between the tracks with our kits. That was a scary experience and then onwards we never crossed train tracks," he said.