Interview with Manoj Tiwary: "If opportunity comes, I am ready for it"

Manoj Tiwary celebrates scoring a century for India against West Indies in 2011

Indian cricket’s unlucky one, injury’s favorite child or perennially benched. There are many ways that Manoj Tiwary is described by those who know little about the competitiveness in the Indian cricketing circle. But for those who know the game, and know what it takes to reach the top – Tiwary is the epitome of toughness. From the struggles of a humble beginning to the highs of personal triumph, from the hopelessness of injury to the joy of wearing the blue jersey, Tiwary has seen it all.

As he embarks on the challenging path of making a return to the Indian cricket team, in a brutally honest conversation, he opens up about the Indian Premier League, the consequences of never getting an extended run in the national team, factors that shape the public perceptions about cricketers and his ambitions for the near future.

Manoj, it’s great to have you here on SportsKeeda. We would love to kick start this interview with your thoughts on how this season of the Indian Premier League panned out for you.

There’s not much to talk about, as you know, I got an opportunity to bat only on two occasions – both the innings being against the Knight Riders. I was very happy with my contribution in the first game, where I top scored for my team. But I wasn’t too pleased with my effort in the second game that I played in Kolkata, where I opened the innings. I could have made more out of that opportunity, scored big and made my team win.

In fact, you were timing the ball pretty well in the first outing against Kolkata at the Kotla, however, in the second game at the Eden Gardens, you were having difficulties in connecting your shots. Was the pitch slow? What was the difficulty?

See the reason was that I am not too used to opening the innings, and that played a role because in T20s you don’t get much time to settle down. Apart from this adjustment issue, there was scoreboard pressure – so I had to go for quick runs. But we must give credit to them for the way they bowled, they played four spinners apart from Umesh [Yadav] and [Andre] Russell, and bowled in the right areas. We were in a position where we could have won the match, but unfortunately, couldn’t.

Manoj Tiwary in action for Delhi Daredevils against Kolkata Knight Riders

The reason I started off with these questions Manoj, is because somewhere deep down you might feel that your two stints with the Delhi Daredevils have been disappointing. If you remember, first season, back in 2008 – you just batted in seven innings, and were part of a line-up that had the top order of Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Shikhar Dhawan and AB de Villiers. You hardly got a chance to bat then. Last season, you got a few games, but you were shuffled constantly. In the three seasons at Delhi, you have around 300 odd runs, whereas, in your four years at Kolkata, you have over a 1000 runs – so how would you contrast the experiences of playing with these two outfits?

Well, you know, it’s also got to do with the opportunity one gets to play in three or four games at a stretch. Obviously, when that happens, one doesn’t take extra mental baggage while going out to bat. But, when a player does well in one innings and surprisingly gets dropped next game onwards – it alters the thought process. It’s not easy, to be honest. It’s very difficult to explain to yourself where you went wrong especially when you played well in the previous game. It’s a question you have to train yourself to react to, and that’s irrespective of your experience in domestic cricket. When I was in Kolkata, I played for four years…

…and you got the number four batting position, regularly.

Yes, initially, I did. The reason I decided to make the shift from Delhi to Kolkata [in 2010] was because I wanted to bat higher up the order. I wanted to play as many matches as I could, and ended up playing some match winning knocks for my team.

Apart from Brendon McCullum, who is a big name, you were perhaps the only other regular from the Kolkata team, who was brought back into the squad in 2011, after the major reshuffle happened post 2010.

Yes, you are right.

So Manoj, while your Kolkata stint was quite successful in years 2010, 2011 and 2012. What happened in 2013? Your form dipped, your place in the batting order was constantly altered. And then, mid-season, there was this mysterious tweet from your Twitter handle that suggested that it was the worst day in your cricketing career. Could you shed some light on all this?

See, what happened, as I mentioned – no matter how much one has played, it is always difficult to adjust when one is dropped after playing well, or if one’s batting position is shifted all the time. It’s not easy because as a batsman, you go in to the match with a particular mindset. However, if you are told to bat lower down all of a sudden, and while I acknowledge that it is completely for the benefit of the team, it becomes difficult for the individual at times. In 2013, I batted at different positions all throughout, and it eventually became a challenge [that] I couldn’t overcome. Like every other player, I wanted to be the hero for my team, and was giving more than my hundred percent on the field. I even ended up cutting the webbing of my palm while attempting a difficult catch, in that very season.

As a result of my injury, I couldn’t play the next few games. After I was fit, and the physio gave me the green signal to play in Mumbai, historically, a place where I have done well – I wanted to play the game badly. But the team management thought I should take some more rest, I was very surprised to know about this, especially when the physio and I had practiced a lot the day before. I just couldn’t take it into my stride.

Also, honestly, I didn’t tweet anything. Somebody hacked into my account. Events transpired in such a manner that I was made to look like the person who tweeted it and followed it up with a damage control tweet. My phone was hacked. You know a lot of people always try to pull you down, no matter what, by doing a lot of tricks – like putting up wrong statuses and stuff.

It’s common these days, in all walks of life, people try to take advantage of your vulnerabilities…

That is exactly what happened, in a competitive environment like in India, wherever you go, there are multiple people who want to take advantage of you. So you have to be very careful. That season was a setback for me, as the Knight Riders lost confidence in my abilities and I was not retained. And what hurts is that it’s not just about me [that I was released]. It’s about the local Indian players, from around the cities that the franchises are based out of, who don’t get much chance in the Indian Premier League. This tournament was launched just to promote Indian talent, from youngsters to players in national reckoning. But unfortunately, I am seeing that we are drifting away from our main purpose of promoting young talent.

I keep hearing Shoaib Akhtar echoing the same sentiments on TV, and he is bang on target. My take is that if more players from what was earlier known as catchment areas, keep getting opportunities to perform in maximum number of games, I think it would help Indian cricket.

Hanging on to the IPL, and I am going back to 2008 and 2009, since you are talking about the idea of the Indian Premier League and why it started. If you see these two seasons in which you missed out – 2009, being the year you were out injured and 2008, being when you didn’t get enough chances. In these two seasons, two players who are now part of the core of the Indian team, Suresh Raina & Rohit Sharma, stood out. Do you think that’s where you lost out? Had you got the same number of chances that Rohit got at Hyderabad, or Raina got at Chennai, would we have seen a different Manoj Tiwary today?

True. Definitely, it’s about opportunity. Talent and hard-work without opportunities can’t take you anywhere. If a player doesn’t get enough chances, and someone loses confidence in him after looking at one or two failures, it’s completely wrong. I think the team management and coaches need to build confidence in a player. If someone is not performing well or is under-confident, the coaches have to do their bit to make him feel like a good batsman. I missed out on this kind of backing.

At the same time, I don’t think that the IPL is everything for me. I give equal importance to our domestic season. IPL should not be a benchmark for selection into the Indian team.

Manoj Tiwary in action for India A against England in 2012

In fact, Manoj, this is something that Gautam Gambhir also spoke of recently. Where he said that it’s hard to judge a youngster’s technique by seeing him bat short durations in the IPL. At the same time, Gambhir agreed that the IPL helps in acclimatizing youngsters with the pressures of international cricket.

Catching on to what you say about domestic cricket, Manoj, you have had a fabulous nine years in the Indian domestic circuit. In your debut Ranji season in 2006, you averaged nearly a hundred, starting from there to 2014, where you were amongst the top run getters in the Deodhar Trophy and Vijay Hazare Trophy. Keeping all these achievements in mind, why do you think you have never got a longer run in the Indian team?

[Laughs] It’s very difficult for me to answer this, as I don’t know why I didn’t [get a longer run]. Saying that, I would love to get an extended opportunity – I still believe in myself to make a comeback and play for India, in the years to come.

When you first came into the Indian team, you made your forgetful debut at Brisbane, jetlagged, you got bowled by a Brett Lee yorker. You waited for three years to get your second chance, in the West Indies, where you were made to open in two of the five games. Then you flew to England, as Rohit’s replacement, and played just one game. When England came to India, again, you got just a dead-rubber game to play in. I think the West Indies series that followed was a big break for you, the one game in Chennai where Sehwag sat out, in order to let you play. The conditions were difficult, but you ended up scoring a century. Take us through that knock…

I am very thankful to Virender Sehwag for giving me that opportunity. He was the captain in that series, and as the series was won, he wanted the reserve players to get a chance to play. Not only did he want them to play, but also ensured that they got their usual places to bat at. It was very nice of him to do that. Gestures such as these, add to the confidence of youngsters.

I believe God helped me during that innings for all the hard work I had put in previously. In that game, India lost two wickets quite early, and when I went out to bat I didn’t have anything on my mind to think about. When a partnership goes on, and you sit and wait for your turn to come, you tend to over analyze and think about unnecessary things. Luckily that didn’t happen in that game and I didn’t have any baggage when I took guard. My blank mind allowed me to do well, as I played on the merit of each ball and stitched a partnership with Virat [Kohli].

At the score of 83, I started cramping due to the harsh conditions and I thought of retiring and then coming out to bat later. Almost immediately, I realized that I might not get a chance to bat again, and thought of making the most out of this opportunity. So I hung around and finished my century, and added those 20-odd runs for my team.

Manoj Tiwary, Virender Sehwag and Irfan Pathan celebrate a Sri Lankan wicket in 2012

I believe that Virender Sehwag has been one of your biggest supporters, ever since you made your IPL debut under him. What is the kind of relationship that you share with him?

He is always there to help, always there to give suggestion and advice about what to do and what not to do. He’s such a great person, a rarity these days. Extremely honest and upfront, he will say nothing behind your back and has a very nice heart. He was a great senior to a lot of youngsters, and not just me. I remember, Shabaz Nadeem speaking fondly about his experience of playing with Viru bhai in Delhi for five years. The kind of freedom Sehwag gives to his players is very helpful.

After that series, you were all geared up for Australia. You had scored a couple of centuries in First-class cricket, and were training to tackle the pace and bounce of Australian pitches. What happened after you went to Australia? You got benched for fourteen-fifteen games, all throughout the CB Series and Asia Cup. MS Dhoni came on air and said that you would get your chance, but Rohit was too good a talent to sit out. Do you think that the Indian team management was unfair to you back then? Where else will a player be benched after scoring a century?

I don’t know. I had no clue at all. The only thing I was thinking was that after scoring that century at Chepauk, I would get a few games. And initially when the batsmen weren’t doing well in Australia, [missing out] came as a shock to me. I didn’t play a single game in the entire series, and there were no reasons that were communicated to me. In the absence of communication, I had no clue why I wasn’t playing. I had to take it in my stride – the positive was that I was there in the Indian team right throughout that period, till the World T20 in Sri Lanka. The only sadness though is that, I didn’t get much chance, even though the Indian middle-order wasn’t performing well.

So when I see my contemporaries playing for India, I often ask myself, what went wrong? I was fully committed, gave my hundred percent, be it while serving drinks or while practicing. One will never know what a few opportunities could have done for me, as around that time, my confidence was sky high. That hundred against West Indies told me that I belonged in international cricket.

It’s regularly seen in Indian cricket, that when a perception is created about a player being ‘talented’, or ‘good to watch’, it often goes against those who are effective and are performing consistently. It happened in the 90s, and then it happened with you and Rohit Sharma. No disrespect to Rohit, an exceptional batsman, but he just wasn’t scoring at that point of time. Do you think that it went against you that you didn’t look as good as Rohit did while batting, or weren’t as elegant. Is this a systemic problem with Indian cricket?

I won’t say that it’s a problem with Indian cricket, but a perception that the so-called experts create by saying things like, ‘oh he is looking so classy’ and ‘see, he has so much time’. But I always believe that no matter how much talent you have, and I don’t wish to compare my talent with anyone else’s – I know for a fact that I might not look as classy as someone else but am as effective as one can be. And when I was out of the Indian team, I was averaging 57 in domestic cricket, figuring at number ten in the all time list of batsmen with highest averages. Averages do tell a lot, and I have scored runs every time against good teams. I know how to score runs, if you remember; I scored 93 against England when they toured India in 2012.

Cutting you there, especially when we are talking about perceptions, sections of the media disregarded your 93 back then, by romanticizing Yuvraj Singh’s comeback knock of 70-odd. Yuvraj is a class player, but when the coach of the India-A team says that Manoj played well but Yuvraj was brilliant, it just sidelines your efforts. Why this romanticization? Why aren’t just performances important?

I think it’s unfair, because each and every player has a different way of scoring runs. Some might look classy, some might not. It’s not their fault if they don’t look technically as good, because at the end of the day, Cricket is a game of scoring runs if you are a batsman and taking wickets if you are a bowler. Look at MS Dhoni for that matter, when he first came in, people questioned his technique. But he scored runs all over with his own technique. If someone is scoring runs at an average of 55 plus and has 19 hundreds in First-class cricket, it won’t happen if he isn’t technically correct. I have a wonderful quote on the way people think these days, “People talk of talent, but they forget that enthusiasm, never say die attitude, and hard work are also God given talents”. So it’s a little harsh for the lesser ones, as, while they don’t look as good at play, they do have these traits which will never be considered to be ‘talent’ by the masses. A hardworking person deserves as much attention as a talented person does - equal opportunity for all.

Manoj Tiwary celebrates scoring the winning runs for Kolkata Knight Riders in the 2012 IPL final

2012 was a good year for you, you played well against Sri Lanka, followed it up with that knock against England. There were people talking about you, and a middle-order berth awaited you, for the Pakistan one-day series. Then a back injury happened - there are a lot of people who believe that the reason your career has been like this is because of your bad fitness and injury management. What do you have to say about that?

If you take my fitness test, I will always figure in the top three. But the injuries aren’t in my hands – even the fittest of people get injured, see any sport be it the EPL or NBA. Injury is all about destiny, and I believe in that. Like I had said earlier, if equal opportunities are given, players won’t feel as bad, when unforeseen moments such as these come about. In case there aren’t enough opportunities, then good communication definitely helps and the player knows where exactly he stands and what he needs to do to get back into the team. After scoring hundreds of runs, if one isn’t rewarded, it pricks a little.

If you noticed, I also scored a century against Australia in a tour match.

True, you have scored good runs against touring sides in the past. However, I have noticed it, that whenever you have been in the reckoning for a national call-up, you haven’t been able to follow up your good performance with a back to back performance. Like for example, after the England knock, there were talks of you getting a call for the Test series, but you got out scoring a 40-odd in the following Ranji game at the Eden Gardens. Yuvraj subsequently got the spot, which was later taken up by Ranji triple-centurion, Ravindra Jadeja. Then, when Australia came in March, you scored a century, but in the following Irani Trophy game, you got out for 37 in the first innings. Why is it that you haven’t been able to capitalize?

As a batsman, you have to make just one mistake to get out. And that’s what happened during that Ranji game against Rajasthan at the Eden. I tried playing out Pankaj [Singh], but got out doing so. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But if someone identifies you, recognizes your potential to play international cricket, I don’t see how one bad knock can change that perception. I have never been able to understand that – if I am able to score runs against England and Australia, and then can’t follow it up with another big one, how is it that I become not good enough all of a sudden, that too for a year?

It’s also important to take into account the conditions in which different players are scoring runs. For example, scoring forty-fifty runs in Lahli will be as difficult as scoring a big double century at Rajkot. In good batting conditions, I have scored as much as others have in the recent past, like my big hundreds at Rajkot. But I have also scored under difficult circumstances, on difficult tracks, like my First-class hundred in Lahli, a few months ago. So people shouldn’t just go by big runs, but by the other factors as well like quality of opposition, playing conditions, and etcetera.

2013 was a bad year for you, apart from the IPL misadventure, you had a shoulder injury and a knee surgery. It’s a year you’d want to forget. In 2014, you scored heavily in List-A matches, but weren’t considered for the World Cup, as you hadn’t played much international cricket in the lead up to it. Saying all of this, what are your expectations for the upcoming Bangladesh tour? You think you’ll be selected?

I did well in Duleep Trophy in Rohtak, where it’s difficult to get runs, I got a century there. I scored 200 plus runs in the Deodhar Trophy and more than 300 runs in the Vijay Hazare Trophy. So with that kind of a performance backing me, I would love to get rewarded with a call-up. It’s just that I didn’t get much chance to play in the IPL this year. I have a lot of expectations as far as getting an India call-up is concerned, a longer run hasn’t come my way, when it does, I can contribute a lot more.

To be fair to the Indian management, they have showed faith in you. Your injury treatments have been sponsored by the BCCI, you have been made captain of the India-A and Rest of India teams, and you have had a central contract for a long time now. It does imply that the selectors still believe in you, and are backing you to come good. So all hope isn’t lost.

I must thank the selectors for their support, be it in the form of past selections or in the form of captaincy for the India-A side. I know that they have the belief in me, but somehow, I have been missing out on a longer rope, and I can only hope that I get it soon so that I can contribute by scoring a lot of runs for my country. I am working hard now; my practice sessions will be in preparation for the Bangladesh tour. Let’s see what happens, fingers crossed. Whatever I have been at the receiving end of till now has been more to do with my bad fortune than with individuals.

Manoj Tiwary in action for India A against Australia A in 2014

Do you think your age will go against you?

Age is just a number, as long as you are fit and can contribute for your team, you are good to go. Look at Pravin Tambe for that matter, see how good he is at the age of 43. Age is just a convenient tool for critics to find flaws in you with. As a batsman, you get better thirty onwards, and it is the best time to score a lot of runs, with all the experience behind you. If opportunity comes, I am ready for it.

Moving on, I wanted to know about your vision for Bengal Cricket. Bengal hasn’t done too well in the domestic circuit lately, but have initiated a lot of positive changes like having VVS Laxman as a mentor and the ‘Vision 2020’ program. What are your plans for cricket in the state?

Vision 2020 is a great initiative to unearth talent. Bengal has the potential to win Ranji Trophy regularly and not just once or twice. It’s just that we aren’t getting our acts together in the 4-day format, but we have done relatively well in List-A matches.

Our main focus right now is 4-day matches, as a team, we want to reach knock-out stages of the Ranji Trophy. Everyone is eager and hungry to win the longer format.

It’s been a long time since we have seen as good a team core in Bengal as we have seen with the likes of you, Wriddhiman Saha, Mohammed Shami, Ashok Dinda and Laxmi Shukla around. Young Sudip Chatterjee is coming along well, it’s now or never.

Yes, we have good promising cricketers apart from the players who are in and around the Indian team. It’s just that we have to convert that potential into performance. We need to find a way, and pull in the same direction as far as a common goal is concerned. Winning the Ranji Trophy is something we all want to do.

Bengal’s Manoj Tiwary, Sourav Ganguly and Ashok Dinda

The challenge that Bengal faces right now will be the absence of Saha and Shami, who will be busy with India duties. Replacements need to be found.

Yes, their experience will be missed when they aren’t around. At the same time, I will always like it if they can join us whenever they are available to play and help the team move forward. Reaching the knockouts of the Ranji Trophy gets you recognized, and provides a good platform for young players. If we play to our potential, we will be a good team. We need to work in a correct way, with purpose and be ruthless. We can’t slip up during important moments by being soft in our approach.

Finally, Manoj, we all know the kind of hardships you’ve had to endure in your quest to play Cricket. From the modest Railway Quarters of Howrah, you have worked your way up, to become one of only 195 players to have played for India in 40 years of one-day cricket. Irrespective of whether you play for India ever again, are you proud of yourself? Especially considering the struggle you have seen and the way you have emerged victorious.

Obviously, I am very proud of myself. I will take this opportunity to thank each and everyone, starting with my family members, my coach Manabendra Ghosh, who has been a pillar all throughout, and all the other people who have been associated with me ever since my U-16 days in Bengal. Of course, not to forget my Bengal team mates. Everyone has played a major role. Obviously, I am extremely proud, but I feel I can deliver more, and haven’t lived up to my potential yet. I badly want to play for India again and serve my country.

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Edited by Staff Editor