'I didn't want to be that bitter former cricketer'

Nearly Men

When Surendra Bhave played his last Ranji Trophy match in 2001, he made a little promise to himself that he wouldn't be a "bitter former cricketer." Bhave, a prolific opener from Maharashtra in the late 1980s and 90s, was one of the several Indian batsmen who missed an Indian cap despite richly deserving it.

The numbers don't lie in his credentials either. In 97 first-class matches since his debut in 1986-87, he accumulated nearly 8000 runs at an impressive average of over 58 with 28 hundreds and 27 half-centuries. Out of 28 tons, he converted seven of them into double centuries with a highest of 292 against South Zone in a Duleep Trophy match in Rourkela.

What makes Bhave's statistics even more impressive is he was an opener. And it's a bit perplexing because Bhave was at his peak when the likes of Sunil Gavaskar and K Srikkanth had retired a few years apart. The closest he came to an India cap was when he was picked for a second-string Indian team for a SAARC tournament in Dhaka. Bhave had impressed with scores of 81 and 42 against Sri Lanka and Pakistan respectively before the event was called off following riots.

It's, therefore, a little difficult to understand the exclusion of such a consistent performer.

"The selectoral part during that time wasn't as evolved as it is today, and a lot of people have suffered because of this 'one-match dilemma'", Bhave points out. "The thing is you build up for the entire season and then fail in a crunch match, and it almost went back to zero those days; like you went back to the first match of the next season to start scoring centuries again. That match usually would be a Duleep Trophy game or if you are really unfortunate, it would be an Irani Cup match where you would be nicked off early. You may have had 700-800 runs in a season but one failure would set you back. So that, I think, consumed a lot of players," explains the right-hander, a technically sound batsman.

Another cheap jibe (beer-talk as he puts it) thrown at him to undermine his batting was "pata-wicket batsman" (flat-track bully). It's true, Bhave did score a lot of runs on the Nehru Stadium pitch, considered a shirt-front, but more than half his runs came away from it.

"No one told me so (pata) on my face, to be honest," says Bhave. "Maybe someone in Mumbai started this campaign (laughs)... Maharashtra-Mumbai rivalry was quite bitter those days. It's no longer there now, it's relevant now. But it's a fact that I did score heavily against them."

Bhave admits he did chase the Indian cap "madly" but didn't want to carry on with the disappointment of not getting it. Post his playing career, he has been a successful selector and coach.

"I took great pride and pleasure in winning matches for Maharashtra," he notes.

"I mean it wouldn't have been possible for me to score seven double centuries, if I didn't love the game. And the respect I won on the way from some of the greatest players in Indian cricket... They thought I was their equal. When I played my last Ranji match in 2001, I made a little promise to myself and said 'I don't want to be a bitter former cricketer, and if I have to pass on anything good to the next generation of Maharashtra or anywhere I coach, then I have got to leave this excess baggage behind.'

"I chased the Indian cap madly, but I was never bitter about not playing for the country," he signs off.