It’s hard being Rovman Powell! Imagine, living in an impoverished locality in Jamaica, having no idea who your father is, being looked after by a single mother. Future must have looked really dark to a small kid like Rovman Powell as her mother struggled to put food on the table. He would have lived the rest of his life in poverty, turning out to be a bitter loser had this gentlemen’s game not found its way to his school. Well, it did and changed his life forever.
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It was just another day when Powell returned from school with a bat, looked at his mum and said: “Don’t worry Mum, I am going to take you out of poverty with cricket.”
“That’s the day he told me. I never ever doubted him. I gave my support,” Joan Plummer can be heard saying with his eyes full with tear to the brim, on a documentary produced by CPL featuring Powell’s rise from humble background.
On Thursday, Powell smashed 67 off 35 balls to etch his name among millions of cricket fans all over. But not many know that he had humble beginnings, distressing could be the right word.
He was in Joan’s womb when his father asked her to vacate the property. A crisis had fallen over this young women who didn’t know where to go. “If I can get through this month, then I can do it for one more month,” she can be heard saying, recalling the old days. Powell, who is currently at top of his game and earning some good money with IPL franchise Delhi Capitals, is grateful and looks back at the hard times with gratitude. “No adjectives are enough to describe my mother. I grew up watching her wash clothes for people just to make a living, just to put food for us, just for me to go to school.”
Not to forget the role played by his sixth-grade school teacher Nicholas Dhillon, who found out that Powell lacks a father figure. It was when he gave the class an activity to do something for their fathers that he found Powell crying in a corner.
“Sir I don’t know my father. So I can’t do it,” the kid said. A stunned Dhillon recalled telling him, “Don’t let it be a stumbling block,” and promised him that he would be his father figure for the rest of his life. Meanwhile the protagonist himself never let up on his dreams, revealing how he would motivate himself during dark times.
“Whenever I am faced with tough challenges, I tell myself, ‘ listen I am not doing this for myself… I am doing it for my mother, my sister. Maybe if I was doing it for myself, I would have stopped. I am doing it for the ones I love just so that they can live a better life than what I had when I was a child. She is an incredible woman.”
On Thursday, Powell smashed 67 off 35 balls. One of those shots came off the fastest balls of IPL history where he just outplayed Umran Malik with shear brute force. It wasn’t your typical happy-go-lucky Jamaican who was at play at Brabourne, this Powell had shades of a kid who became a man early in the absence of his father. Like he used to be in his childhood, helping his mother whenever the roof leaked water due to heavy outpour.
He would tell his mother to sleep and that he would keep a watch on the water pouring down from the roof, making sure it didn’t reach the mattress in the middle.
West Indies power-hitter Rovman Powell was bought by Delhi Capitals (DC) franchise for INR 2.8 crore at the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022 mega auction on day 2 of the two-day event in Bengaluru.
Rovman Powell is a middle-order batsman who bowls occasional medium pace. He recently smashed a sensational T20I century against England National Cricket Team in Bridgetown.
But it was his performance in ICC Cricket World Cup qualifier in Zimbabwe in 2018 that he really made some noise. It was Harare where his legacy was born. In the ending stages of the documentary, he can be heard promising his sister that he would name his daughter “Harare.” But what if it’s a boy, she asked.
“I don’t know, Zimbabwe boy?!”
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