"Her Majesty The Queen gave me the message of my first child's birth" - Farokh Engineer recalls a memory of playing at Lord's
Former Indian wicket-keeper batsman Farokh Engineer got the opportunity to ring the five-minute bell to kick off proceedings on Day Three at Lord's. It has been a tradition since 2007 to ring the bell before the start of the day's play. Before Farokh Engineer, seven other Indian cricketers have done the honors and rang the bell.
On the special occasion, Farokh Engineer reminisced about a wonderful memory about the birth of his first child while he was playing at the Lord's. In a video on Lord's Cricket Ground's official Twitter account, Farokh Engineer said:
"My favorite part of the ground is of course being in the middle or on the balcony at the Lord's. Over here in the long room, it was her majesty Queen who gave me the message of my first child's birth. Yes, and it was a huge privilege. My wife was in India expecting our first child. There was a telegram those days, the majesty read the message and came up to me and said Engineer(they always call you by surname here for some reason) there is a piece of wonderful news for you.
I thought it could be only about the birth of my child. I said, What's it a boy or girl ma'am? She said What did you want? I said a girl because I knew my mother had passed away and she said that I will come back to you as your first child, so I knew I was going to have a daughter. So my daughter was named Minnie after my mom, so it was great to hear that from my majesty the Queen."
Who are the other Indian cricketers to ring the bell at Lord's so far?
The Nawab of Pataudi, Sunil Gavaskar, Dilip Vengsarkar, Kapil Dev, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, and Sanjay Manjrekar are the other Indians who got the opportunity during India's previous tours of England in 2007, 2011, 2014, and 2018.