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A tribute to Vengsarkar

The recent change of the selection committee brought to mind once again how under-rated Vengsarkar was as a batsman. To an extent, justifiably I suppose given that his record (overall and abroad particularly) definitely doesn't let one classify him as a great batsman. He probably wouldn't even make my Indian top 5 of all time. But he was a valuable player at a time when we didn't have that many batsmen to support Gavaskar and Vishwanath (given the shabby treatment that Mohinder Amarnath always received) and always did his utmost to rise above his limitations as a player. My memories of him will always be of a player who struggled in the West Indies and Australia but that is only because I happened to start watching cricket at a time when he was nearing the end of his career. More recently, he's been the best selector that India has had in some time and is greatly responsible for India's recovery as a one-day team and in India having a pool of pace bowlers to pick from.

In closing, a look at his career stats (as a Test match player) throws up some interesting bits. For a player of his calibre, its pretty shocking that he doesn't average more than 35 anywhere except India and England (he hasn't scored a hundred anywhere else either). Also interesting is that being the captain (although in my opinion he shouldn't have been made skipper) didn't affect his batting average at all. And the third interesting bit is that he performed much better (ave 61.23) under Kapil Dev than under Gavaskar (ave 40.98). I'll have to look into the stats of some other guys of the time to see if there's a trend (and therefore a story) there.

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