Cricketer who walked the talk

“I always played to win,” emphasised Thilak Naidu during his retirement speech last Wednesday. Ironically, nothing can drive home this fact more emphatically than his final Ranji Trophy match for Karnataka in Delhi in the winter of 2009.

In fading light, Karnataka were pursuing an achievable target on the final day of the match but the Delhi bowlers were resorting to time-wasting tactics. Strangely, the umpires too thought it not appropriate to caution the home bowlers against delaying the proceedings. Not unfamiliar to such tricks by opponents, Naidu knew attack was the best option to deal with the situation. He did manage to pull off a couple of fours but fell soon for 20-odd runs.

Under the scanner for some time, the stumper knew his spot in the side was on the line and he desperately needed a decent amount of runs against his name. He could easily have compiled a meaningless 50 or so against an attack that was more looking at containing runs than taking wickets and, who knows, could still have survived the axe.
But that was against his grain, and it always has been.

“At the start of the season itself, I had been told that if I didn’t get runs, it would be tough for me to be in the side,” Naidu said. “Yes, I could have gone for my 50 but there was an opportunity to win the game so I went for my shots. I got out and I knew that I had played my last match. But I never regretted it for a moment. If anything, I am happy with the way I played my game,” he remarked.

The 34-year-old was dropped from the squad after the Delhi match but the least the then selection committee could have done was to inform the player that he had been left out. If Naidu was hurt at the way he was treated, then he did a great job of hiding it.

Irrespective of the not insignificant numbers that he stacked up -- 93 first-class matches, over 4,000 runs and 237 dismissals behind the wickets -- in his 12-year playing career, Naidu’s is a story of what could have been rather what it actually is. Easily the most accomplished of the three wicketkeepers in contention then -- Parthiv Patel and Ajay Ratra being the other two -- the Bangalorean was close to making the India cut but missed out due to a combination of factors, none of them relating to his game.

The snub affected him and consequently his game too suffered in the subsequent season. He did overcome the disappointment the next year and piled on a huge amount of runs for the State side but by then, more wicketkeepers had mushroomed across India and the competition had become that much stiffer. Naidu had missed the bus.

That he was a special talent though was never in doubt. Right from his debut season, when he struck a century against Haryana, Naidu remained one of the better batsmen in the State side. While batting, he could switch gears as effortlessly as he would stump a batsman out in a flash. He once went 55 balls on nought during a game against Railways, the one Naidu rates as one of his favourite innings, and on another occasion, he rattled 88 runs in an 89-run association with KP Appanna for the last wicket against Delhi whose attack had Ashish Nehra and Ishant Sharma in its line-up.

For the better part of his career, he kept wickets to the likes of Javagal Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad, Dodda Ganesh, David Johnson, Anil Kumble and Sunil Joshi and towards the end to R Vinay Kumar and A Mithun. That he came away unscathed was a tribute to his skills behind the stumps. And for the record, his 237 first-class dismissals are only behind his more illustrious State-mate Syed Kirmani’s.

Naidu often gave the impression that he didn’t take himself seriously, and perhaps even less his talent. He would thus frustrate and exhilarate you in equal measure. At the end of the day, what sticks in the mind though is that Naidu was a selfless cricketer who always put his team ahead of himself.