Recently Greg Chappell quoted as saying Australia can’t afford to waste talent like India does because India is having talent in abundance. I completely agree to the Greg Chappell atleast on this point that Indian Cricket have talent in abundance and our cricket board is certainly wasting the talent. Although we won the World Cup and we are No.1 in test cricket. Indian team have to keep performing to maintain the glory of these achievements and for that we require big pool of players.
Lets look at history of Indian cricket. Starting from 1983, Sunil Walson was in Word Cup squad of 1983. He did not play single match before the World Cup for India, during the World Cup and never played cricket for India after World Cup. Very talented player but failed to play single game for India even though becoming part of World Cup winning squad. Waste of talent.
Laxman Shivramakrishnan, very talented leggie hailed from Tamil Nadu but played for 2-3 years only and his career never flourished. He is now renowned commentator. Waste of Talent. Leg-spinner Narendra Hirwani made a dream debut against West Indies in Chennai and picked up 16 wickets in his debut game but failed to prolong his career much. Played few games after that match and then lost somewhere. He is now member of selection committee.Waste of Talent. Sadanand Vishwanath and Nayan Mongia, both very talented wicket-keeper who played for India only for very short period and then faded away. Waste of Talent.
Off-Spinner Rajesh Chauhan played important role in India’s success during 90s, later on labeled as throw bowler. He undergone the test also to prove that his action was correct but cricket administrators in India did not supported him and he also lost somewhere. Remember he was part of the team which white-washed English team in 1993.Waste of Talent. Rajesh Chauhan, Anil Kumble and Venkatpathy Raju formed best spin bowling attack for India in 90s and trio won lot of matches for India at home.
Atul Wassan, Vivek Razdan, Subroto Bannerjee, Salil Ankola, Abey Kuruvilla, Tinu Yohannan, T.Kumaran, Debashish Mohanty, these are the names of fast bowlers who played for india for very brief period and then lost their way. Who says India don’t have potential to produce fast bowlers. India produced the fast bowlers but failed to preserve them from injuries and cricket board didn’t gave them enough opportunities as well and dropped them after one or two failure. Waste of Talent. David Johnson, very few cricket lovers know about him. He was India’s fastest bowler once and he bowled with round arm slinga action much like Lasith Malinga. He played for India in few games in 90s but later on labeled as throw bowler and thrown out of the cricket. Cricket administrators didn’t even fought for him. Serious Waste of Talent. Now Malinga bowling with same action and his action is legal.
Praveen Amre, middle-order batsmen form Mumbai. He was also disciple of Ramakant Achrekar and Sachin’s mate. Very talented batsmen and made dream debut in South Africa in 1992-93 series as he hit century on debut in South Africa against the likes of Allan Donald, Fanie DeVilliers, Brian McMillan and Craig Mathews. Played very few test matches after that series and faded away as he was dropped after one failure and never made it to the Indian team.Waste of Talent.
Mukund Parmar, captain of Gujarat Ranji Team during 80s and 90s known as run-machine in domestic circuit and he scored tons of runs in domestic season and hit centuries and double-centuries consistently but never made it to the Indian team even though scoring bulk of runs in domestic cricket. Yere Gaud, very talented batsmen, playing for Railways in Ranji Trophy and recognised as special talent and scored plenty of runs but never got the chance to play for the Indian team. Waste of Talent.
Jacob Martin, Hrishikesh Kanitkar, Atul Bedade hard-hitting batsmen, Shiv Sunder Das opened for India in few test matches successfully, Akash Chopra, now playing for Rajasthan, played for India during 2002-2003 season. These are the names who emerged on the scene with a storm but lost their way and never made a comeback. Irfan Pathan, potential all-rounder, Robin Utthappa, very talented opening batsmen, list continues
There are many more players and if I mention all of them then I think I need atleast 3 to four blogs posts to accommodate them. Indian cricket was never short of talent and will not going to have any shortage in future as well but we don’t have the system in place to preserve these diamonds. Our administrators are more inclined towards money and selectors are biased towards the players of their respective zones which does not help in spotting and preserving the genuine talent. Take an example of Murali Vijay he failed miserably in ODIs yet he was getting chances because he hails from Tamil Nadu from where chairman of selection committee belongs. So he is getting special favor in selection.
We have more talented players than Murali Vijay but they are not getting enough opportunity because they don’t have any god-father. We have likes of Robin Utthappa, Sourabh Tiwary, Manish Pandey, Abhishek Nayar, Umesh Yadav, Bhubneshwar Kumar, Varun Aaron, Deepak Chahar, Pankaj Singh, Joginder Sharma, Faiz Fazal, Chetehswar Pujara, Ravindra Jadeja, Ajinkya Rahane, Manoj Tiwary, Ashok Menaria and list continues but these players are not getting chance to play for India because they don’t have special reference. So it is true that India have a talent in abundance but our administrators are ignoring these serious talents and hence these talents are wasted.
its time to preserve this abundance of talent, so that we can consistently get the players like Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, VVS laxman, Javagal Srinath, Zaheer Khan,etc.
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