Manoj Tiwary: Is this the end?

One might call me parochial, but I just can’t help sympathize with certain Indian cricketers who are perpetually ridden with ill-fate. Mohammad Shami is one of them, for being dropped from the India squad despite putting up brave performances against Pakistan and England. Wriddhiman Saha is another, who despite being India’s best wicket-keeper is never considered worth his salt because he is not as flamboyant as one should be. This diminutive lad from Siliguri has had to constantly live under the shadow of the Indian captain in the IPL setup, while the lesser likes get game after game. And despite a steely performance against Australia at Adelaide, he wasn’t even considered for a single Test thereafter. But the name that stands out in that list is that of Manoj Tiwary, centrally-contracted Indian cricketer and Bengal captain; perhaps better known as India’s most ill-fated batsman and the one who was benched for fifteen games after scoring an ODI century!

Twitter is quite famous for the jokes that are relayed by millions from across the world. Some of the more popular Indian cricketers on Twitter have been Rohit Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja. But not lagging much behind in terms of popularity has been Manoj Tiwary, who quite essentially has been tagged a benchwarmer for life. The squad for the upcoming ODI Tri-series in the West Indies was announced just a couple of hours back. And as expected, the entire Champions Trophy squad has been retained and quite rightly so. There is no reason for chopping and changing a winning combination, but imagine what must be going through Tiwary’s mind, one of the squad probables, who now faces an incredulously long domestic season.

Hailing from Howrah, in West Bengal, Tiwary is touching 28. His prime years of batsmanship are behind him and he now faces the tough task of competing with relatively younger players for an India spot. It’s worth knowing that as he approaches thirty, it will become increasingly difficult to find a favour amongst selectors for a place in the team; remember Subramaniam Badrinath? Tiwary’s tryst with sour destiny began in 2007, when Raina was out of contention, Rohit Sharma was a good 3-4 months away from selection and Virat Kohli was still in school. That’s when a second string India team was sent to Bangladesh, as a result of the World Cup debacle. That’s when Gautam Gambhir had his second coming and that is exactly when the 22-year-old Tiwary was having a Ranji average of 99. On the eve of his ODI debut, he injured his shoulder in a fielding drill and remained out of action for a year. Nobody knows for sure what would have happened if he did debut, maybe good performances against a lesser known side would have boosted his confidence for future endevours or maybe he would’ve been sorted out by the likes of Syed Rasel and Mashrafe Mortaza. It’s pure speculation now, but what if he had produced a magical innings on debut? Would things be different then?

His second chance came in Australia as a replacement for the injured Yuvraj Singh, where a Brett Lee yorker shook him off his jet-lag on his ODI debut and like always we saw another name get forgotten in the dusty outfields of Indian cricket. It was the same place where Bengal’s prodigal son had played his first international, fifteen years back and it soon became the place where the ‘talented’ Rohit Sharma was born. The IPL was even worse, no fixed batting position and a top order of Viru, Gauti and AB – he hardly got an opportunity while Raina made merry batting at number three for Chennai. 2010 was his best year till date, a swap deal with Kolkata Knight Riders brought him bright fortune and he plundered the bowlers for runs in domestic cricket and India A tours and soon 2011 got him his third call up for India. And the drama continued – picked, dropped, no fixed batting spot, drafted in last moment and benched in the next game, but he kept trying till that magnificent 104* against West Indies at Chennai. That was his third consecutive century, with two Ranji hundreds behind him. The lad was even practicing for the ‘tennis-ball bounce’ to be faced in Australia but guess what? He was benched for fifteen games because the Indian captain felt that Rohit Sharma was an ‘exceptional talent’ and needed more chances to settle down. And that Tiwary’s chance would come later.Come the Sri Lanka tour of 2012, Rohit’s exceptional talent got exposed when he notched up 11 runs in five games, getting bowled five times and Tiwary was given a chance in the final two games. In one of them, he took a career-best haul of four wickets and in the other, scored a fluent 67 to help India win.

Later that year, he was in contention for a Test spot as the new selectors were determined to make radical changes. He left his calling card with a match saving 93 against a tough English attack at Mumbai, but Yuvraj Singh took away the spotlight as the Indian media thought it to be very romantic for a cancer-surviving patient to score 70 odd runs fluently and follow it up with a double century against a domestic team. So we all started hoping for a Yuvraj comeback. Lalchand Rajput, the India-A coach, brushed aside Tiwary’s contributions to focus on Yuvraj’s. And well, Tiwary didn’t do any good by getting out to Rajasthan for 42 in the Ranji match that followed. He was closest to a Test call-up but missed it, because Yuvraj Singh was back! It’s funny that when Yuvraj did get dropped, India’s requirements changed all of a sudden from that of a number six batsman to an all-rounder who could do a little of both and had recently scored two triple hundreds on the highways of Rajkot.

It’s painful to chronicle Tiwary’s career path as injuries keep coming up, like the one that made him miss India’s home leg against Pakistan and England. With defeats to England, reshuffle was in the air yet again and the Irani tie between Rest of India and Mumbai was a keenly watched affair. Tiwary scored 37 and 69 and got a place in the India-A team to face Australia. It’s unimaginable to think that he went onto batter the Australian bowling line up alongside Gautam Gambhir in that warm-up game with a masterful 129 and in a way set the tone for the series where Australia was drubbed 4-0. Sadly enough, a player who consistently scored against big oppositions on big occasions was never thought worthy of an extended run in the India setup.

There’s little to expect from here on for the Bengal captain. The Indian team is in transition and the captain has his own favourites. While the squad is being shaped for the 2015 World Cup, Tiwary might just think he still has a chance. He’d be 30 then but has only 8 ODI games under his belt at present. Shashi Tharoor once wrote how Tiwary is one of Indian cricket’s greatest tragedies, something that looked like it would be proven wrong but eventually wasn’t.

There’s a South Africa tour and the middle order looks unlikely to open up. Perhaps when Sachin retires, there might be a place, but can that be taken for granted? The sad truth of Indian cricket is that some players are given longer ropes than the others. Perhaps Dhoni could’ve thought of Tiwary as an ‘exceptional talent’, things would’ve been different then. Tiwary wouldn’t have had to miss fifteen games after a century. He (Tiwary) could try finding solace in the company of Murali Kartik, who took seven wickets against the World Champions, Australia in an ODI match and never got to play for India again.