10 Indian cricketers only die-hard 1990s fans will remember

Every young aspiring cricketer in India yearns for the opportunity of playing for India, with there being no bigger honour for a cricketer, or a sportsman for that matter, than to play for your country at the very highest level. Only a select few, however, manage to make it to that level, and a majority of those do not last long enough to enjoy any sort of reckoning.Here are 10 such Indian cricketers of the 1990s who even diehard cricket fans will do well to remember:

#1 Aashish Kapoor

Aashish Kapoor enjoyed a fairly distinguished domestic career with various states, most notably Punjab and Tamil Nadu, in the 1990s and early 2000s, taking 398 wickets and scoring close to 3500 runs from 128 first-class matches. But he was unfortunately not able to reach similar heights during his international career. He played just 4 Tests & 17 ODIs and did nothing much to speak about in that time, with his biggest achievement probably being part of the Indian squad during their ascent to the semi-finals of the 1996 World Cup.

#2 David Johnson

Career-best match figures of 10/152 against Kerala in the 1995-96 Ranji Trophy season led to David Johnson’s maiden national call-up for the one-off Test match against Australia at the Feroz Shah Kotla in October 1996. He took 1/52 from 16 overs in the match, with his lone wicket being that of Michael Slater. He was subsequently picked for the tour of South Africa, and played in the first Test at Kingsmead, Durban, where he took the wickets of Herschelle Gibbs and Brian McMillan. But a massive 328-run defeat coupled with Johnson’s tendency to leak runs led to him being discarded by the Indian selectors for good. His first-class career was a little more satisfactory, taking 125 wickets from 39 first-class matches for Karnataka.

#3 Devang Gandhi

Although Devang Gandhi began his Test career against New Zealand at Mohali in October 1999 with an inauspicious duck off 14 balls, he did signal a sign of promise by scoring an impressive 75 from 242 balls in the 2nd innings. When he followed it up with scores of 88 and 31* in the next Test at Kanpur, it looked as though India had finally found an opener of reckoning after much chopping and changing throughout the late 1990s. But it all came crashing down for Gandhi on the subsequent tour of Australia when his technique was brutally exposed against Glenn McGrath & co. and he was soon consigned to the past.

Gandhi, however, did continue having a good first-class career and finished up with 6000-odd runs from 95 matches at an average of 42.73 with a highest score of 323 before announcing his retirement in April 2006.

#4 Dodda Ganesh

Dodda Ganesh would have undoubtedly had aspirations of forging a long Test career when he made his debut for India against South Africa at Cape Town in January 1997, but his hopes ended up being unfulfilled way too quickly for his liking as he played his 4th and, what turned out to be, final Test against West Indies a mere 3 months later. It was, perhaps, understandable considering the fact that he took just 5 wickets at an expensive 57.40 from those 4 Tests. He also played a solitary ODI against Zimbabwe in February 1997 where he bowled decently and took 1/20 from his 5 overs but never got further opportunities to prove his mettle.

#5 Jacob Martin

One of a handful of players to score over 1000 runs in a Ranji Trophy season in the tournament’s long history, having done so for Baroda in the 1998-99 season, Jacob Martin first played for India in an ODI against West Indies at Toronto in September 1999. Despite managing an aggregate total of just 40 runs from the 3 matches in the series, Martin earned selection for an ODI tri-series in Australia, involving the hosts and Pakistan, shortly after. He was perhaps unfortunate to not be able to make the faith of the selectors count, being run out in 3 of the 5 matches he played due to, it must be said, some excellent work by the fielders.

He did earn a recall for another tri-series in South Africa, with Kenya as the third participant, in October 2001 but played in just 2 games against Kenya after which he was never considered, leaving him with an unsatisfactory ODI record of 158 runs from 10 games at an average of 22.57.

#6 MSK Prasad

Originating from the small town of Guntur in Andhra Pradesh, MSK Prasad first impressed during an India A tour of Pakistan in 1997-98, with coach Kris Srikkanth speaking in glowing terms of the wicket-keeper batsman’s capabilities. He forced his way into the Indian Test team following the injury to Nayan Mongia during the 1999 World Cup and featured in 6 Tests, 3 against New Zealand at home and 3 against Australia Down Under, in addition to 17 ODIs. While he was fairy tidy behind the stumps, his batting wasn’t up to the requisite international standard, bringing an inevitable end to his international career.

#7 Nilesh Kulkarni

Nilesh Kulkarni, who played for Mumbai in first-class cricket for many years, earned his Test debut against Sri Lanka in Colombo in 1997. On one of the flattest and most lifeless pitches ever, he remarkably took the wicket of Marvan Atapattu off his very first delivery in Test cricket, giving him the distinction of being the only Indian bowler to do so even to this day. But the left-arm spinner soon got a reality check as Sri Lanka went on to score a staggering 952/6 from 271 overs, with Kulkarni conceding 195 runs from 70 overs for just one wicket.

Kulkarni played one more Test against Sri Lanka at home that same year before being recalled four years later for the 3rd Test against Australia in Chennai during the historic 2001 series. But match figures of 1/137 put an end to Kulkarni’s hopes of adding to his Test appearances, leaving him with a mere 2 wickets from his 3 Tests.

#8 Noel David

Noel David was nothing more than a decent off-spinning all-rounder for Hyderabad in domestic cricket. It was a huge surprise, then, when he made his ODI debut for India against West Indies in April 1997. What was perhaps a bigger surprise was the fact that he had figures of 3/21 from 8 overs on debut, albeit lower-order wickets of Ian Bishop, Curtly Ambrose and Franklyn Rose. It was ultimately inevitable that David’s international career was going to be a brief one and it sure was as he played just 3 more ODIs before being done away with.

#9 Vijay Bharadwaj

On the back of a 1000-run domestic season with Karnataka, Vijay Bharadwaj made his one-day debut against South Africa in September 1999, quickly followed by a Test debut against New Zealand. A technically sound middle-order batsman capable of bowling useful off-spin, Bharadwaj, however, was never able to replicate his domestic form at the international level.

From 3 Tests, he scored 28 runs at an average under 10 and took just one wicket. His one-day career was a tad better no doubt as he scored 136 runs at an average of 27.20 and took 16 wickets from 10 ODIs. It wasn’t sufficient, though, to convince the selectors of at least giving him a long rope in the limited-overs set-up.

#10 Vikram Rathour

Vikram Rathour formed the fulcrum of the Punjab batting line-up during the mid 1990s, and was duly rewarded with a place in the Indian Test squad for the 1996 tour of England. He scored 759 runs at 58.38 in the tour games, including a classy 165 against Worcestershire, giving hope of him having a long-term international future. But a highest score of 20 from his 3 Tests in the series soon made it clear that he was not up to it at Test level.

He did, however, play 3 more Tests – one against Australia in Delhi and two against South Africa in South Africa – but a failure to score even a single fifty in that time did nothing but make him one of a number of Indian openers tried to no avail during that fallow period for Indian Test cricket.

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Edited by Staff Editor