This was a year ago - I was in my first or second month at my job, and sat on a chair under the banyan tree on the edge of the Pachaiyappa's College cricket ground.
Globe Trotters was playing Alwarpet CC, and
D. Vasu, at 40 Alwarpet's senior citizen and almost certainly the oldest player in the TNCA First Division League, sat next to me nursing a sore finger.
Vasu, batting at eight, had made 82 to help Alwarpet to 362 in the first innings. In reply, Globe Trotters was almost certain to take five points for the first innings lead (this was the third and final day, and an outright win wasn't possible) with
Venugopal Rao breezing towards a hundred.
Vasu, bowling his easy-on-the-eye left arm spin, had sent down 25 tidy overs without really frightening the Trotters - his one wicket came from a catch at deep square leg.
Venugopal reached his hundred with a boundary off
R. Raghuram, another left arm spinner, a decade younger than Vasu but with a midriff about five inches prouder in circumference. The next ball, he stepped down the track and swung through the line, without reaching the pitch, and holed out to mid off. Forty five runs to get, five wickets in hand. Forty runs later, all out. Raghuram picked up six, and when the last wicket fell, Vasu leaped off his chair, swooped with arms extended like Shoaib Akhtar celebrating a wicket, and ran to join his teammates, some of them young enough to be his sons.
Later, he said, "It's not done. You simply don't play shots like that."
Now, Vasu was a Tamil Nadu and South Zone regular right through the 90s, and was part of a spin trio -
M. Venkataramana and
Sunil Subramaniam were the other two - that went on to attain legendary status among followers of Tamil Nadu's always cursed fortunes in the Ranji Trophy. Off spinner Venkataramana was the only one to play Test cricket -
his only Test came at Sabina Park in 1989 - but misty-eyed Tamil Nadu die-hards (whose judgment of selection issues we must always take with a couple of sodium chloride crystals) will tell you all three were Test class.
Whether or not Vasu was Test class, I cannot tell you; I never watched him bowl in his prime. But he was one of countless cricketers, among whom are numbered many spinners, who turned in consistent performances season after season in first class cricket, and never played for India.
In contrast, Venugopal played a few ODIs for India and IPL matches for Deccan Chargers, but never really fulfilled his early promise - In 2004, he made an unbeaten double hundred to help South Zone chase 501 in a
Duleep Trophy match against an England 'A' side containing Kevin Pietersen, Matt Prior, Ed Smith, Simon Jones and Sajid Mahmood. At one stage, people were comparing Venugopal to a young Gundappa Viswanath. Now, in a league match in a college ground, he had thrown away his wicket, seemingly putting personal milestone ahead of team requirements, and indirectly lost his side the match.
Automatically, the temptation is to read into this one-off situation and throwaway quote one man's honest, unrewarded toil and the other's failure to maximise his potential. It is dangerous to do so.
Sadly, however, a lot of former cricketers and selectors do just that. How often, for example, do you see appearing in nearly all the news channels and most dailies, unsubstantiated (or "according to sources close to...") discussions of how cricketer X, dropped from the national side, wasn't considered for tour Y because of 'attitude problems'?
Rao is only 27. With the impending departures of Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman, he still has a chance, if he has a couple of towering domestic seasons, to slip into Test reckoning - but as I type, I know I'm being naive. Seldom do 27 and 28-year-olds make Test debuts for India.
Seven or eight years on, you can imagine the picture. Venugopal Rao watches a talented young batsman throw his wicket away in a league match. He shakes his head. He says, "It's not done. You simply don't play shots like that."
