Top 5 cricketers to have come from West Bengal

#4 Laxmi Ratan Shukla

Shukla’s legacy mainly lay in domestic cricket

Laxmi Ratan Shukla was drafted into the national squad for the 1998-99 Asian Test Championship match against Sri Lanka. He was all of 17 and had taken 3 for 55 and 1 for 32 against Pakistan for the Indian Board President’s XI. However, Ashish Nehra was flown in at the last moment and made his Test debut instead.

A month later he made his ODI debut. He played three ODIs in all and opened the bowling in two of them. Managing a solitary wicket, his economy rate read 4.94, but Shukla never got going with bat. The Howrah born never got a chance to play in the longest format of the game either.

Shukla’s legacy, however, lays in the domestic scenes, where he played for nearly two decades, scoring 6,217 runs at an average 36 and taking 172 wickets at a strike rate of 35 in First-class cricket. Shukla reached his magnum opus against Assam in 2010-11 when he crossed 250 and added 417 for the sixth wicket along with Wriddhiman Saha. This remains a record stand for any wicket for Bengal.

In the IPL, Shukla represented the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Delhi Daredevils and finished with an economy of 7.11 and strike rate of 121. Given his prowess in the game’s shortest version, it is surprising he was never considered for T20Is.