Amit Mishra has finally got the selectors’ nod. He was the leading Indian spinner last season with 46 wickets from 11 first-class matches. By G. Viswanath.
Amit Mishra deserves his place in the Indian team. The Haryana wrist spinner has had a fairly long and successful journey in first-class cricket. He has toiled hard for seven years and in the process learned the tricks of the trade.
Clearly the thought process has changed from the previous selection committee, headed by Dilip Vengsarkar, to the current one under Krishnamachari Srikkanth.
Piyush Chawla, just about two months away from shedding the tag of a teenager, was the favourite almost a year ago when the Indian team’s think tank suggested to the selectors that the Uttar Pradesh leg-spinner travel with the Indian team to Australia to get the benefits of practising on the hard wickets there. He was also regarded as the bowler likely to succeed Anil Kumble.
Shane Warne passed on a few tips to Chawla during the DLF-IPL championship and was all praise for the young wrist spinner. Warne also talked highly of Mumbai’s club cricketer Dinesh Salunkhe; it’s not known whether Mishra had any opportunity to pick Warne’s brains when Delhi Daredevils and Rajasthan Royals clashed in the two IPL matches at the Kotla and Sawai Mansingh Stadium.
The old-fashioned and conventional thinking, that the spinners need to be put through the grind in first-class cricket, has prevailed and Srikkanth and his fellow selectors need to be commended for it. Mishra was denied opportunities to play Test cricket in the past. The selectors are now keen and eager to test his potential and find out if he is good enough to challenge the Australians in the forthcoming Test series or the England batsmen in December.
Indian cricket has seen some leg-spinning talent go waste. Laxman Sivaramakrishnan was India’s most gifted leg-spinner after Subhash Gupte and Bhagwat Chandrashekar. Unfortunately, Sivaramakrishnan’s career lasted for only a little under three years before he faded into the oblivion. He made his debut when he was only 17 — just like left-arm spinner Maninder Singh.
India, however, was lucky to find a bowler of the class of Kumble, who made his debut in 1990. His 953 wickets (616 in Tests and 337 in one-day internationals) speak for Kumble’s class and the disciplined manner in which he has bowled.
Mishra will turn 26 in the last week of November, an age generally regarded too ripe for a spinner to enter the big stage. After playing for seven years in domestic cricket and on pitches that have largely been conducive to slow spin, Mishra’s CV is good. He has sent down 15487 deliveries, taken 289 wickets at 25.21 with 16 five-wicket in an innings and one 10-wicket in a match efforts. He has been equally impressive in limited overs cricket, taking 88 wickets at 27.19. In Twenty20, he has claimed 26 wickets at 12.96.
Mishra was India’s leading spinner with 46 wickets from 11 first-class matches last season. He is a fine fielder and no rabbit with the bat either. So he brings a proven package to international cricket. He was able to sustain his high motivation levels even when the selectors and the team management favoured Chawla. He proved his mettle in the IPL (he captured 11 wickets at 12.54 for Delhi Daredevils) and was back in the reckoning for a place in the Indian team.
The new selection committee under Srikkanth has straightaway set off a competition between Mishra and Chawla. The Uttar Pradesh leg-spinner has a fine record for a 19-year-old, taking 142 wickets at 24.97 in first-class cricket; 77 wickets at 28.07 in limited overs matches and 22 wickets at 22.09 in Twenty20.
Chawla has come through the ranks in much quicker time, having played for India under-19, India ‘A’ and for India in two Tests and 21 one-day internationals.
Mishra too began with an excellent showing in the Cooch Behar, India under-19 and India ‘A’ matches. Delhi’s Chetnya Nanda has done well for a team that’s packed with fast and swing bowlers. Nanda is 29, but one never knows when he will get his big break. As of now it’s a clear tussle between Chawla and Mishra.
The competition between the two should be engrossing in the coming years — that is after Kumble bids farewell.
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