Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Much ado about a run-out

Judging by the amount that's been said and written about Ian Bell's run-out-that-wasn't at Trent Bridge, you would think that it has been the most significant occurrence of the series so far when nothing could be further from the truth. Andrew Miller  and Samir Chopra seem to be of the opinion that it was the crucial turning point in the match, which I completely disagree with (the post-tea sessions on days one and two were far more critical and momentum shifting). Andy Flower says that if Tendulkar had been run-out similarly in Bombay, it would have caused an international incident. He's clearly feeling the effects of having been in the England cricket set-up for too long given that a) its very improbable that Tendulkar would do something as daft as Bell did, and b) when a controversial run-out (but within the laws) did happen to him (against Pakistan at Eden Gardens no less), Tendulkar went out to the crowd and appealed to them to calm down and let the game proceed...
Post a Comment
Read more

A kick up the backside

Its very interesting (and revealing) that so many Indian cricketers pull up their socks and become better players once they've been dropped from the side and left out in the cold for a while. The trend is even more prevalent currently when the selectors have a larger pool of good players to choose from. Dravid (from the one-day team), Kumble, Ganguly, Sehwag, Yuvraj, Zaheer, Harbhajan, the list goes on. In fact, the only people I can think of who haven't been dropped at any point in recent years are Tendulkar (in any form of the game), and Dravid (from the Test team). This article in the TOI attributes their post-drop performance improvements (at least in Yuvraj's case and a few more as well) to anger. I'm not too sure I agree. I think its more a generic Indian mentality of taking things easy and getting soft and comfortable too easily. Its a national trait and one that needs great guarding against. I've discovered the hard way how getting physically unfit or slack...
Post a Comment
Read more

First thoughts on the Ashes

The only minor surprise for me in the 2013 Australian Ashes squad announced last week was the selection of James Faulkner ahead of Moises Henriques as the second all-rounder. Minor because given  the Shane Watson shenanigans of recent times, I would have thought that Inverarity and co would have opted for a second batting all-rounder (which is what Henriques clearly is). Instead they've gone with a bowling all-rounder in Faulkner and it'll be interesting to see what happens if Watson's batting woes in Test match cricket continue in the first two Tests. As for the rest of the squad, given the way the inexperienced batting performed in India, Rogers and Haddin were always going to make it in to the team and the choice of Khawaja over Smith appears sound too given that the latter's strength is in playing spin bowling. The batting still looks as unsettled and shaky as the Indian fast bowling line-up and its here that the series will be won or lost for the Aussies. The retu...
Post a Comment
Read more