From: papadopoulos-dimitrios@yale.edu (Dimitrios Papadopoulos)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.cricket
Subject: Re: Vinod Kambli
Date: 13 Nov 1992 12:47:00 -0500
Organization: Yale University Science & Engineering UNIX(tm), New Haven, CT 06520-2158
NNTP-Posting-Host: minerva.cis.yale.edu

In article <12NOV199222551146@utarlg.uta.edu> d188sid@utarlg.uta.edu (S RAMACHANDRAN) writes:
>In article <741@wavefront.wti.com>, ravi@wti.com (Ravi Raj) writes...
>
>> 
>>Srikkanth is a case in point. He was an extremely entertaining batsman.
>>But during the initial stages of his career, he was lucky enough to get
>>the number of chances he got. But of course, he made the most of it,
>>and went on to become an excellent partner to Gavaskar. But that precisely
>>is my point. If there really were regional biases against him because he was 
>>from TN, he probably wouldn't have gotten the number of chances he did, and 
>>he wouldn't have become the dreaded opener that he became.
>> 
>>Replace Srikkanth with let's say, Ramnath Parkar. Had Parkar been treated
>>the same way as Srikkanth was, we'd all be screaming, "Bombay favoritism!"
>>at some point or the other...
>
>I really think that if R.Parkar had been as swashbuckling a batsman as
>Srikkant he would have definitely got as many chances as Srikkant got(as
>you say he got in the early stages of his career). Srikkant would have
>got the same chances even if he was from Bombay... 
>
>Sidd.R.

This was about 10 years back-so i am slightly fuzzy about it but I think
Srikkanth got a raw deal in the sense that he was for a long time only in 
one-day side and the tag of "not a test match stuff" kept him out
of test side for a long time.He started his career against England
and got swashbucking 65 in his second test.Couple of failures after that
and he was promptly dropped.He was there in the team to Pakistan in 1982
and infact impressed everyone when he hooked Imran for couple of sixes
in a one-day.[This was something in those days since on that particular
tour of 1982 every single Indian batsman used to shudder in his feet 
facing Imran and the contempt and impunity with which Krish treated
Imran was quite remarkable]
He was brought into the side for the fifth test[I don't think he played
in any other test on that tour] and this time
hook was his undoing.A trap was set and he fell for it when he was caught 
hooking when india needed a large total to save the match.I guess it was after 
this that the tag that he was not test match stuff got stuck to him.He was
not selected for the windies tour and was there only for the one day games
when windies toured india after the world cup.He was trying desparately
hard in these one-day games to show to the selectors that he can keep
his head down in his desparate bid to regain place in test side-ofcourse
he failed miserably as he was curbing his natural style of batting.He spent 
couple of seasons in oblivion and when he was recalled in the last test
of enland 84-85 tour he grabbed the oppurtunity with both hands and got
86* at Kanpur.He was subsequently chosen for benson hedges world cup
and performed magnificiently to cement his place for quite some time. 


--Pushkar


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