Published: Sep 19, 2016, 04:09 PM (IST)
Edited: Sep 19, 2016, 04:30 PM (IST)
Through his long and illustrious career, Dilip Vengsarkar was one of the most successful batsmen of India. Yet, as Arunabha Sengupta discusses, he had the unfortunate knack of missing out on landmark occasions.
The best Indian batsman of the 1980s, and for a period of amazing purple patch the best batsman of the world. From 1983 to 1987, he outscored the likes of Sunil Gavaskar, Javed Miandad and Viv Richards by more than 15 runs an innings.
Dilip Vengsarkar was not the most popular of Indian cricketers, primarily because he shunned the spotlight and stammered embarrassingly when interviewed. He was too much of a professional and too private a person to capture popular imagination in a nation of larger than life heroes and a penchant for refusing to believe numbers.
However, no one can deny that he was one of the best India has ever produced.
It has been said that if David Gower been born Indian and Vengsarkar an Englishman, they would have been national symbols. Gower’s frivolous artistry made him enormously popular in India, but the English viewed him with suspicion. Vengsarkar’s low-key professionalism and ‘introvert’ tag jarred with the Indian image of the superstar, but was the blueprint for English acceptance.
Somehow, even fate conspired to keep him away from focus. And as India gear up to take on New Zealand in their 500th Test, one cannot help but reflect about the monumental milestones that somehow eluded the maestro.
Vengsarkar was a regular in the side for 16 years.
Yet, three of the very few matches that he missed turned out to be monumental.
He was not fielded in the triumphant World Cup final of 1983 after an injury forced him to retire hurt in a group match.
And then there was a Test he missed at the very peak of his powers, and that turned out to be the historic tied Test of 1986-87. It was the second tie in the history of cricket and the last one so far. But, looking at Vengsarkar’s form in those days, and scanning the scorecard of the tied Test, one wonders if it would have ended in a tie if he had played. India, by all accounts, would have scored a lot more in the first innings and the match would have taken a completely different course.
His claims to captaincy were also ignored for many a year before an amazing run with the bat left the selectors little choice. When Viv Richards brought his men to India in 1987-88, Vengsarkar was given the mantle of leadership. He scored 102 in his first Test as captain, a tenacious innings in one of the most fascinating Test matches ever played. West Indies triumphed by 5 wickets, riding on a brilliant Richards ton.
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He followed this with two typically gutsy innings that helped India saved the second Test. Another century followed at the Eden Gardens before a Winston Davis delivery rose sharply to break his wrist and put him out of action for the rest of the season. By then he was the No. 1 batsman in the world according to the Deloitte Ratings. In the last 16 Tests, he had scored 1,631 runs at 101.93 per innings with 8 hundreds.
And the injury ensured that his penchant for missing important landmark matches continued. Having carried the team along through the first few Tests, he watched from the sidelines with his broken arm while Narendra Hirwani ran through the West Indians to square the series. Ravi Shastri led in that Test. That happened to be the 250th Test for India.
CK Nayudu, the man after whom Vengsarkar had been dubbed ‘Colonel’, had led India in their first Test match. Polly Umrigar had led the 50th. Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi the 100th. Bishan Singh Bedi the 150th. Sunil Gavaskar the 200th. And now Ravi Shastri led the 250th.
Vengsarkar had led the country in their 247th, 248th and 249th Tests, and would lead them in the 251st through to 257th. But the one he missed turned out to be the 250th.
A saga of unfortunate milestones missed by a superb cricketer.
(Arunabha Sengupta is a cricket historian and Chief Cricket Writer at CricketCountry. He writes about the history of cricket, with occasional statistical pieces and reflections on the modern game. He is also the author of four novels, the most recent being Sherlock Holmes and the Birth of The Ashes. He tweets here.)
