Iceland is a country with a population of just 323,002 people but is capable enough to send a contingent of 23 men to the UEFA Euro 2016, currently underway in France. India is a country of 1.25 billion people but has managed to qualify for the FIFA World Cup only once. The reasons behind this are innumerable and have a lot to do with the manner different sports, in general, are treated differently in the country. Cricket rules the country’s streets like no other sport does, but a country of over a billion people vying to play and follow a solitary sport doesn’t hold good either for the future of sports in the country.
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Jeff Thomson, the legendary Australian fast bowler, while speaking to Sportskeeda on the amount of cricketing talent that India has, had opined, “In Australia, it’s quite different. We might be playing well nevertheless, but we aren’t so many. So getting noticed is easier there. Here, in India, there are so many people. Hundreds of thousands of cricketers who play and that makes getting noticed very hard in this country.”
Hence, it is abundantly clear that making it into the playing XI every time that the Indian Cricket Team takes the field is an astronomical probability, and retaining the places once you’ve beaten the odds is even sterner. Therefore, barring a few gifted men, who occupy spots of their choice in the line-up, the Indian Cricket Team resembles the refugee camps in Europe currently being overwhelmed by the influx of refugees from war-torn nations, at least in terms of ‘places for all,’ and there is nothing much that the players can do, apart from persevering.
Several cricketers, on the back of brilliant domestic performances, have earned their national call-ups but have either warmed the bench before being shown the door unceremoniously or have played in second-string teams – such as the one participating in Zimbabwe at the moment – and have never been picked for the full-strength squad despite their impressive performances. Names like Kedar Jadhav, Murali Vijay, Gurkeerat Mann and Manoj Tiwary spring to mind amongst the current crop of Indian cricketers, but one man who has stood apart, at least in terms of breaking into the main side and laying a substantial claim for his spot, has been Ambati Rayudu.
Humble beginnings
What makes Rayudu’s journey all the more remarkable is the fact that it took him 10 arduous years from the moment he made his debut in competitive cricket – in 2002-03 – to make his international debut for India – at the age of 27, in 2013 – and the road was laden with a series of disappointments. He was touted as a young prodigy after he smashed an unbeaten 177, at the age of 16 in 2002, to help India U-19s beat England U-19s after being down and out at 137/6 while chasing 304.
In the following Ranji Trophy season, in 2002-03, the right-handed batsman became the youngest batsman to score a century and a double century in the same match in the history of the Ranji Trophy, when he made 210 and 159* playing for Hyderabad against Andhra. Rayudu finished as the third highest run-getter of the tournament, plundering 698 runs at an average of 69.80.
With his prowess as a top-order batsman already been established, Rayudu was given the reigns of the Under-19 team in for the ICC Under-19 Cricket World Cup in 2004, after he had successfully led the Indian colts to the title victory at the Asia Under-19 Tournament, held in Pakistan in 2003. The Under-19 World Cup of 2004, held in Bangladesh, in some ways, proved out to be both, the zenith as well as the nadir of Rayudu’s short career.
Although India finished as one of the semi-finalists in the tournament, Rayudu’s form with the bat dipped – as he averaged just 24.83 with the bat – and could manage only 155 runs at 11.92 in the following Ranji Trophy season. The poor show with the bat was worsened by Rayudu’s deteriorating relationship with the then Hyderabad coach, Rajesh Yadav, something that saw him make the move from Hyderabad to Andhra – in 2005-06 – a move that backfired, as the Guntur-born batsman could boost his batting average to only 35 that season. He returned to Hyderabad in the following year, in 2006-07 but averaged only 21 with the bat after suffering a knee injury midway through the tournament.
Tryst with the ICL
Thus, at 21, in 2007, Ambati Rayudu’s hopes of making his India debut were in dire straits, and it was perhaps the nonchalance of the youth or the lure towards the acknowledgement of his talent on a worldwide basis that led him to his association with the now-defunct - and once the thorn in the BCCI’s eye - Indian Cricket League. “I didn't want to play ten years of domestic cricket and feel that I have not played any international quality opposition,” Rayudu had remarked on his association with the Hyderabad Heroes of the ICL, in 2007. “(It is a chance) to play against quality opposition for three years and it will also be telecast on TV. People will hopefully see me perform. And I want to perform for my own personal satisfaction,” he added further.
As ambitious as his plans were, they were not there to save him from the wrath of the ruling governing body of the sport, as Rayudu as well as all other cricketers who participated in the ‘rebel’ league were banned from participating in domestic cricket. Hence, at a time when players lesser than his age – such as Rohit Sharma – were revelling in the World T20 glory, Rayudu had decided to tread on uncharted waters with his future looking as bleak as that of a ship at sea on a stormy evening. If Rayudu’s ambitions had taken him astray, the BCCI’s ambitions brought him back on track.
In 2009, the board offered an amnesty proposal to all the rebel cricketers and allowed them to return to competitive cricket. Rayudu, along with 79 other Indian players were thenceforth given a lease of life and the gritty Indian batsman was determined to make the most of it. Finally, after 8 years of struggle in the domestic arena, the world saw the first glimpse of the man, much to the youngster’s desire, when he appeared for the Mumbai Indians in the third season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2010.
The transition and the comeback – from ICL to IPL
The second decade of the 21st century saw Rayudu's fortunes take a turn, as the most lucrative cricket league in the history of the sport washed away the blemishes of many a cricketer, including Rayudu, and filled the shores with hopes and employment. Since his debut for the Mumbai Indians, Rayudu has never aggregated less than 250 runs and has played at least 13 games for Mumbai in each season. A sparkling debut saw the top-order batsman score 356 runs from 14 games at 27.38 with 2 fifties, and he was retained for the next season, in 2011, wherein he bettered those stats by garnering 395 runs at 29.31 from 16 games with 4 fifties.
The decade also saw Rayudu plundering runs aplenty in the domestic circuit as well, as, in the 2010-11 season as well as the 2011-12 season, the batsman scored prolifically scoring 566 runs from 9 matches at 56.60 for Baroda and was their highest run-getter of the tournament as they finished runners-up in 2010-11 and went a step further in 2012-13, amassing 666 runs at 60.54. In addition to that, he was the top run-scorer of the 2012-13 Deodhar Trophy and also starred in the Irani Cup game the same year, wherein he scored 51 and 156* playing for Rest of India against Mumbai.
Amidst the run-fest, the Blue cap kept evading him time and again, as he was included in the list of 30 probables for the World T20 2012, but couldn't make it to the final 15, and was named as a replacement for MS Dhoni during the tri-series in the West Indies in 2013 but didn’t play a game. It took a second-string Indian side to finally help Rayudu earn his place in the national side, as he made his ODI debut during the one-day international series in Zimbabwe in July 2013, and the cricketer, after all the years of baiting himself in and out of contention, wasn’t the one to let the opportunity go.
Instead, he grabbed it with both hands and became the 12th Indian batsman to score a half-century on ODI debut as he finished unbeaten on 63 and guided his team to victory alongside the then captain, Virat Kohli. But such was the batsman’s fate, that his crests and troughs matched each other with an unmistakeable frequency. Rayudu retained his place in the squad post the Zimbabwe series for the limited-overs fixtures against Australia and West Indies at home, the same year, and against South Africa and New Zealand in 2013 and 2014 respectively. However, he managed to play only two games across the four series.
The man who keeps coming back
An Asia Cup knock of 58 against Pakistan in 2014 saw him being picked for the bilateral series against Bangladesh but failed to impress there. Up until the first half of 2014, Ambati Rayudu was the epitome of a talent laid to waste – and that was for absolutely no mistake of his. The man, however, hadn’t learnt to give up. After the ignominy of the 3-1 series loss to England in the Pataudi Trophy in July 2014, India were in to save some pride in the ODI series against the English. Rayudu played two knocks of substance – 64* in the third ODI at Nottingham and 53 in the fifth ODI at Leeds – but was remembered less for these and more for his presence at the non-striker’s end – stranded on 3 runs off 5 balls – when his captain, MS Dhoni, failed to score 16 off the last over in the one-off T20I – denying Rayudu the strike twice in the over – at Birmingham on the same tour.
Following the withdrawal of the West Indies midway through the 2014 home tour, a second-string Sri Lanka came in to fill in for BCCI’s ambitions, and Rayudu, sniffing the opportunity, embraced it gratefully by registering his maiden ODI ton – 121 in the 2nd ODI at Ahmedabad – to help the board fuel its ego and whitewash the Lankans in a no-holds-barred series. Consequently, Rayudu played his maiden 50-over World Cup in 2015, at least from the benches, as he was picked in the 15-man squad but never played a game. By now, the man from Guntur had realised that the luck, or the lack thereof, that had brought him so far was going to be the one to take him even further.
So he persevered and was rewarded with (guess what?) another second-string tour to Zimbabwe, wherein he was adjudged as the man of the series for his knocks of 124 and 41 in the first two ODIs of the three-match series. A full-strength series awaited, as the Proteas came for a full tour of 3 T20I, 5 ODIs, and 4 Tests, and Rayudu did the usual. He warmed the beach, perhaps looking at the field as his perceived vantage point. With all these stutters and stumbles, one would not expect him to have a record that he has. From 34 ODIs, Rayudu has 1055 runs at 50.23 and a strike rate of 76. In the recently concluded series against Zimbabwe, he became the 4th fastest Indian batsman to reach 1000 ODI runs, only behind Virat Kohli, Navjot Sidhu, and Shikhar Dhawan.
He takes catches, throws himself around the field, bats wherever he is required to, and can keep wickets if needed. He isn’t Rahul Dravid, yes, but if India have to nurture another Dravid, they’d feel that they’re already a bit late.
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