To the Cricket fan with
unquenching desire to know more and more of the game. Way back in Feb 1976, India played New
Zealand in ODI no. 36 - 3 south Indians
– R Sudhakar Rao and Pochaiah Krishnamurthy alongside veteran Bhagwar
Chandrasekhar made their debuts. Years
later in Asia cup match in May 2000 India beat Bangladesh at Dhaka – curiously,
Ganguly used 8 bowlers – AjitAgarkar, T Kumaran (!), SouravGanguly, Anil
Kumble, Sunil Joshi, HemangBadani, Robin Singh &Sachin Tendulkar. Kumble had ordinary figures of 9-0-43-0 – did
not beat the batsman much – but one of his deliveries beat the bat, jumped, and
hit the wicketkeeper injuring his eye.
He rushed to Chennai for treatment – did not play any one dayer after
that. How many Indian wicket-keepers
do you remember ?
That man is part of selection
committee now – that injury to Syed
Saba Karim provided an opportunity for
Mongia to come back into the side. To be fair, there was no way Karim could
have got out of the way as the ball ricocheted too quickly off the pads. Saba Karim was a surprise choice for the tour of West Indies in
1989 but being the reserve wicketkeeper, never got to play a single
international game. He was forgotten for some time but came back into the
Indian side during the 1996 tour of South Africa.
In the world of Wicket keepers, the
mercurial Mahendra Singh Dhoni is a jadugar.
He has been brilliant behind the stumps, some great dives, flashy
stumpings and .. .. and – some brilliant run-outs collecting the throw, facing
them, and hitting the stumps in style with accuracy without even caring to turn
back, thus catching the batsmen in surprise. The speedy and agility are
unmatched – this is no post on his batting abilities as a finisher – but more
on wicketkeepers of India.
MSD is a thinker – as revealed by an interesting
anecdote in journalist Bharat
Sundaresan's book The Dhoni Touch. Sundaresan reveals how Dhoni asked his team
not to celebrate exuberantly when India were on the verge of beating Australia
in a one-day international at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in 2008. Dhoni’s
thinking was, it will show the formidable Australians that the Indian victory was
no great surprise, and definitely not an upset.Australia were the reigning
world champions back then and Dhoni was leading India for only the 15th
time in ODIs. After India chased down the 160-run target with five wickets in
hand, Dhoni advised a young Rohit Sharma to make the customary post-match
handshakes as deadpan as possible, just to let their opponents known that India
treated a victory over Australia the same way they treated a win over any other
nation and an Australian defeat was no longer an upset.
Wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant has
earned plaudits for his flamboyant batting in the shorter formats, but India A
coach Rahul Dravid believes he has the "temperament and skills to bat
differently" in the longer formats too.Pant earned his maiden call-up to
the Indian Test side riding on impressive knocks for India A during the
recently concluded tour of the UK, where he hit crucial half-centuries in
four-day games against West Indies A and England Lions.
His active international career
started in 1961 and continued to 1975, and he was India's first-choice
wicket-keeper for most of that period, keeping wicket for the spin quartet of
Bedi, Prasanna, Chandrasekhar and Venkataraghavan. He was also a highly useful,
stylish and very aggressive batsman, scoring two Test centuries.
He was the
wicketkeeper for the "Rest of the World" team that played matches
against England in 1970 and against Australia in 1971-72. Farokh Engineer was
the first Indian cricketer to endorse Brylcreem and was known as a 'Brylcreem
Boy'.
Engineer’s 109 as opener in the
third Test against the West Indies at Madras in 1966-67 turned out to be a
career-defining innings for him. Prior to the match, he had been in and out of
the Test team as he faced stiff competition from BudhiKunderan and KS
Indrajitsinhji.
After his scintillating hundred (94 of which came in the first
session of the Test), Engineer was a regular member of the side till his
retirement. He played in English league
too.
Pochaiah Krishnamurthy made his test
debut against the West Indies during the victorious Indian tour of West Indies
in 1970-71, under the captaincy of AL Wadekar. He played in all the 5 tests but
later went out of favour. He toured NZ
in 1976 too, making his debut and playing his solitary ODI. Syed Kirmani was
the quietly efficient worker ant who replaced the flamboyant Farokh Engineer. His
12-year stint at the top saw a sea-change in the way India played. The early
part of Kirmani's career was spent keeping wicket to the famed spin quartet,
never the easiest of tasks. After they faded away, he had to step back a few
paces to deal with a seam attack spearheaded by Kapil Dev.
The TN camp was gaga about Bharath Reddy who toured as understudy of
Kirmani, and played when Kiri was dropped for WC 1979 and subsequent tour. In the 1983 tour to WI, India recalled couple
of veterans AnshumanGaekwad and Srinivasan Venkatraghavan under Kapil Dev –
Kiran More a youngster was part of the squad.
After a fairly long spell as understudy to Kiran More, Mongia made it to
the Indian team in the mid 90s and from then on was been India's No. 1. In
between, there was ChandrakantPandit, who played more than a couple of tests
alongside More as a batsman.
Ajay Ratra gritted 115 not out in
Antigua in 2002, becoming the youngest wicketkeeper to score a Test century. He was just 20 and it was only his third Test,
but later the summer proved to be cruel as he lost his place in the Test side
to Parthiv Patel, and in the one-day side to the appointment of Rahul Dravid as
keeper in the quest for balance. SadanandViswanath dazzled in 1985 down under,
but failed miserably in Sri Lanka to fizzle out. The other keepers would include - Deep Das
gupta, Dinesh Karthik, MSK Prasad, Vijay Dahia, Sameer Dighe, Pankaj Dharmani,
Naman Ojha .. .. .. ..
WriddhimanPrasantaSaha was drafted
into the Bengal Ranji side after regular wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta signed up
with the Indian Cricket League. He grabbed the chance becoming the 15th Bengal player to
score a hundred on Ranji debut. A
last-minute injury to Rohit Sharma handed Saha an unexpected debut in Nagpur -
as a batsman.His second Test appearance - against Australia in Adelaide in
January 2012 - was also somewhat accidental, a result of MS Dhoni's suspension
due to a slow over rate. In between, Saha played two ODIs against New Zealand. Dhoni's retirement from Test cricket after
the Boxing Day Test against Australia in Melbourne in 2014 opened the doors for
Saha, who had long been an understudy, to firm up his position in the team.
Now there are clouds over his playing
for India.WriddhimanSaha is set to
undergo surgery on his right shoulder in Manchester in the last week of July or
early August. There is no timeline for his return to action after that, but it
is likely that he won't be able to even lift a bat for two months after such a
surgery. This bulletin was made public on the BCCI website on Saturday, three
days after Saha was left out of the England tour with no reason given.Even the
head of the national selection panel MSK Prasad seemed to have been unaware of
the shoulder injury. A day after the selection meeting in England, Prasad was
quoted by the Kolkata-based Telegraph as saying that Saha's thumb fracture had
not healed in time. However, it emerged later that Saha had been struggling
with a shoulder injury for close to six months.
Over the last six months, India's
first-choice Test wicketkeeper WriddhimanSaha has been struggling with a
shoulder injury, for which he has been to the National Cricket Academy (NCA)
for various rehab sessions, has seen three different doctors, has taken three
injections, and will now need a surgery after which he won't even be able to
lift a cricket bat for two months. He is likely to lose a year of cricket, if you
don't count the few IPL matches he managed in between. If he doesn't make it to
the Australia tour at the end of this year, Saha will have missed 12 straight
Tests, the only format he represents India in. He will be 34 by the end of this
year and it does appear doubtful whether he will be able to regain his position
after so many tests and passage of time.
With regards – S. Sampathkumar
23rd July 2018.
No comments:
Post a Comment