Indian Wicketkeeping: A 75 year legacy
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Recently Indian Cricket celebrated 75 years of competing at the highest level in the longer form of the game. These last seven and a half decades have produced some memorable, though fleeting, moments for Indian cricket but it must be said, India has grossly underachieved on the cricket field for a country whose past colonial masters were in fact the founders of this gentleman’s game.
In spite of all the talk about the overall below par performance, cricket has managed to capture the imagination of the common public and continues to hold sway among sports in India. The turning point was indubitably the Prudential Year - as everyone calls 1983 - Kapil Dev holding the Prudential World Cup on the Lords’ Balcony becoming part of the folk lore.
On June 25, 1932, Mohammad Nissar bowled India’s first ball in Test Cricket. From that day 75 summers ago till today, India has come a long way in maturing as a force to reckon with in the game. She has produced some excellent batters, a few good pace bowlers and, without doubt, can take the liberty to proclaim itself as the breeding ground for quality spinners. But all along, a vital cog in the wheel has always rested uneasily - that of the wicketkeeper.
The wicketkeeper’s is a very interesting position - a demanding job that requires squatting and kneeling all day - hardly acknowledged by the viewing public — they are more like the umpires - getting the attention only when they make mistakes. And more often than not, these mistakes turn out to be costly blunders. Some are etched in history - who can forget Kiran More dropping Graham Gooch at Lords when he was in double digits - he went on to score 333; very recently Matt Prior of England, putting on show a live display of the ‘How-Not-to-Keep-Wickets manual’, moving leisurely most times, and whenever his legs moved fast enough for his gloves to meet the ball, pushing hard at the red cherry, just inches from the first slip’s waiting palms and guiding it to the boundary.
It can get really nasty. A joke that was doing the rounds in the British Press -
Question: What do Geraint Jones and Michael Jackson have in common?
Answer: Both wear gloves for no reason!!!!!
The evolution of the Indian Wicketkeeper makes for a very fascinating story. It is one of twists and turns - one akin to musical chairs - some occupying the chair longer than others - some edging out others to the seat - some forced onto the seat early in their career - some given a chance in the evening of their careers.
All in all, the position of the keeper hasn’t been dealt with properly by the Indian selectors, save for a decade between 1976 and 1986 when Syed Kirmani’s reassuring presence behind the sticks was crucial, initially for the success of the Indian spin quartet and later for the quickies, especially Kapil Dev, resulting in many notable victories.
The man who faced India’s first ball in Test cricket from Bill Bowes, Janardhan Navle was India’s first wicketkeeper and the first in the long list of glovemen who could only manage single digit appearances for the country. Interestingly, pre-partition India, before the war, was served by four different wicketkeepers - Dattaram Hindlekar with 4 Test Caps spread on either side of the war leading the list. Post 1947, the question seemed to have been answered in the form of Probir Sen who was the first choice keeper for almost half a dozen years. Perhaps he would be the only keeper to boast of a first class hat-trick against his name!!
These are good days for Indian cricket - they have the luxury of playing two full time wicket keepers in their starting line-up. Dinesh Kartik would be lying if he said that he loved fielding at point and leg-slip. His first love has always been keeping wickets and would relish any opportunity he gets behind the batsman. But this is not the first time there has been an healthy competition for donning the keepers’ gloves.
Even in the early sixties, Farokh Engineer and Budhi Kunderan, both accomplished batsmen, vied for keeper’s slot. Make no mistake - both of them were better than Dhoni and Kartik with the bat and in their glovework. And they, alongside Kirmani, are the only ones of their ilk to have touched the three figure mark with the bat, twice in their career.
That Kunderan was drafted into the Indian side even before he made a first class appearance is testimony to the brilliance of the flashy keeper-opening batsman. He opened the innings with so much authority that any player of the new millennium would be proud of his array of strokes - if he was given more opportunities he might have been probably talked in the same breath as, say Adam Gilchrist of today. The 192 he plundered of the English bowling in Madras in 1964 helped him cross half a thousand runs in a single series - unmatched to this day by any Indian Keeper.
Farokh Engineer, apart from his good looks - he was India’s first BrylCreem model - was a tenacious cricketer known for his remarkable toughness on the field. He was the guardsman behind the sticks for a long time after Kunderan fell out with the selectors. By the end of the first World Cup, there was talk of this young Karnataka keeper tipped to succeed Engineer in the job. And when he did, he made sure the job was his, for the better part of the next dozen years.
Syed Mujtaba Hussein Kirmani was a text book wicketkeeper whose keeping techniques were punctilious and immaculate. This extremely agile keeper was a wall behind the sticks; he used his body as the second line of defence and not many balls would pass him. If you had to pick one wicketkeeper who has served the country judiciously in the last 75 years, it had to be Kirmani. A dozen short of 100 test matches and close to two hundred dismissals against his name, Kirmani is India’s most successful wicketkeeper and would have been an automatic choice as the Keeper in any Indian XI until… Mahendra Singh Dhoni arrived on the scene eighteen years after his retirement.
A trend can be observed in Indian Wicket Keeping history - more like occasional spikes jutting out with small vibrations on either side. There have been many fantastic keepers - Naren Tamhane in the fifties, Engineer and Kunderan in the sixties and seventies, Kirmani in the eighties and Mongia in the nineties. But numerous others have been called for national duty and dumped in no time.
One of the reasons for this was the “Catch ‘em Young” bug which seems to have been passed on from one set of selectors to another. Right from the selection of Chandrakanth Patankar for a lone test during the turn of the year in 1957-58, the Indian selectors have picked many youngsters hoping they would mature with time. But it wasn’t to be - as was seen in the case of Sadanand Vishwanath. He was a part of the successful team that won the World Series of Cricket - he was quick, flashy and spirited, having an infectious attitude and the exuberance of youth. But his inconsistency did him in - very similar to the way Parthiv Patel has scripted his career so far.
Parthiv was spotted young - he made his India debut at 17 - before playing in the Ranji Trophy - keeping wickets to a man almost double his age, Anil Kumble - but Parthiv was disastrous behind the sticks and was found wanting on more than one occasion. Though he made amends for his mistakes with the gloves by making valuable runs, he ran out of favor with the selectors in due course. But it must be said, Parthiv, of late has improved his keeping a lot and has become an accomplished opening bat for the second string Indian side.
Any discussion about Indian Wicketkeepers would be incomplete without mentioning the duo from Vadodara - Kiran More and Nayan Mongia - definitely among the better keepers India has produced - the latter is considered to be next only to Kirmani in terms of his glovework.
For most of the late eighties, the diminutive More did an admirable job behind the stumps without doing anything extra-ordinarily brilliant. The only refulgent stroke of brilliance from More was his inducing the famous Frog Jump from Javed Mianded that must surely rank the most sought after picture postcards from WC 1992. Post Kirmani era, Chandrakanth Pandit and Vijay Yadav played sparingly, but it was their batting skills more than their keeping abilities that fetched them their spot in the side. In 1994, Nayan Mongia made his debut and he turned out to be more than an appropriate replacement for state mate Kiran More when the latter faded away with some lackluster performances.
Mongia was technically perfect and was a very vocal keeper. He was quite a handy batsman - by the late nineties, most countries started looking out for batsman-keepers and India tried to discover the batsman in Mongia by promoting him up the order. He scored a brilliant 152 against Australia in 1996, but apart from that one innings there is not much to talk about his batting. He was at ease keeping to Kumble, Raju and Harbhajan during the nineties but during the latter part of his career, he made the news for all the wrong reasons - the match fixing scandal, unruly and coarse attitude and unwillingness to team up with others. In spite of all these, Nayan Mongia would probably be remembered as a rare cricketer, to whom wicketkeeping came naturally.
Ironically, even as Mongia was eased out of the team, India struggled to find a good replacement for him. It was sure his shoes would be too large to fill, but the succeeding years saw a host of wicketkeepers get their shot at the Team India cap. MSK Prasad, Saba Karim, Sameer Dighe, Vijay Dahiya, Deep DasGupta, Ajay Ratra, Parthiv Patel, KKD Karthik and finally Dhoni.
Though Dhoni has been quite an effective stumper, he has a long way to go. Not a natural wicketkeeper - he started off as a football goalie - Dhoni has taken to the rigors of International cricket smoothly. But much depends on how much he learns on the job. And with Dinesh Kartik constantly threatening his place, Dhoni cannot afford to relax. The contest between the two might possibly become a three cornered one with Parthiv knocking the selectors doors with strong India A performances - it only adds to the competition and would spur each of them to give their best.
All said and done, Indian Cricket has come a long way in these last 75 years and the stability of the Keeper’s position would only strengthen the side in the long run. With three competent keepers vying for the slot, no one would be happier than the Indian captain Rahul Dravid - his services behind the sticks wouldn’t be required any more!
posted by VAC | 7:12 AM
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