Indian Cricket's lesser talents

The generally held opinion amongst the cognoscenti in India is that Anil Kumble is the fastest leg spinner in its illustrious history. This opinion is a myth. The fastest leg spinner was infact Venkatesh Prasad whose stock delivery was the leg spinner bowled using his fingers and a longish runup. Some people called it a slow leg cutter, but they were wrong as usual. Venkatesh Prasad's change of pace delivery was the faster one that he sent down at approximately 115kmph. If we look at the
the effort/pace ratio for the figure that was V Prasad, it emerges as the highest ever in international cricket, though only marginally above that of one Abey Kuruvilla.

The 90s saw the arrival of brash young cricketers from Karnataka which coincided with the meteoric rise of Bangalore as India's silicon valley. And they were a bit like their software counterparts who were fresh out of college, brash, had the social grace of duckweed, could write code in Java, knew PL/SQl like the back of their hands and were put on mission critical onsite projects the day they joined.

Bursting onto the international scene were David Johson, Dodda Ganesh, Sujit Somsundar, and Venkatesh Prasad. Lanky, unathletic, uninspiring cricketers who would have gone onto achieve greater heights only if they had a spot of talent.

David Johsnon was renowned for consistent bowling in the corridor of absurdity. Little wonder that his first test wicket was Australia's Michale Slater aka Slasher. Dodda Ganesh looked menacing and was particularly adept at bowling balls that did
nothing off the pitch or though the air. He also had the knack of bowling a beatifully disguised no ball which would go for four byes. A wasted talent indeed.

But the most striking of these cricketers was Sujith Somsundar aka "Somu mere laal" as a friend of mine used to call him. Once facing Alan Donald in a one day international, he was so overcome with dread that he sidestepped all deliveries by
moving far away from the leg stump. He was not merely giving himself room to play a shot, he gave himself a 2BHK apartment and that too to avoid a shot.

Soon the software bubble burst and by extension these hard working cricketers were laid off. India continued to lose more mathces than it won. It lost most matches playing insipid, uninspiring, spineless cricket and the ones it managed to win it
played mesmeric, youthful awe-inspiring cricket. There was no middle path.

Selections were made based on a need basis. Apparently Atul Bedade was chosen specifically to hit sixes. After the Sharjah tounament he was dropped inspite of hitting a splendid 40 odd in the final. The reason - he did not hit enough sixes. Salil Ankola, Vivek Razdan, Raju Kulkarni, Gyanendra Pandey et al - they came, they saw and they whimpered.

As a cricket fan it was a frustrating period because on one hand there was Sachin Tendulkar being sublime and almost everyone else being subliminal. On other occasions even SRT flattered to deceive. You could predict a result in those days even before the first ball was bowled. Probably match fixing had something to do with it as well.

Nikhil Chopra, Ajay Sharma, Rajesh Chauhan, Gagan Khoda, Praveen Amre (scored a centry on debut too), the karnataka brigade, WV Raman....All men who made Indian cricket outrageously unattractive, inconsistent and cliched.