Wicket-keepers are like office boys

The article was written by G.Rajaraman during the Indian Cricket Team's conditioning camp in Bangalore,2004.I was an assist wicket-keeper for 3 weeks and am proud to have kept wickets to Anil Kumble,Harbhajan Singh and all the bowlers in Indian Cricket.

Fans of Indian cricket may or may not get to hear about K Karthik but he is not likely to forget the National team’s training camp in Bangalore this month in a hurry. I have known him for long enough to be aware that he will cherish his collection of memorablia that he picked up for helping the team at the nets as a wicket-keeper.

The seventh-semester student of engineering has already collected a sweat-shirt from Yuvraj Singh, a cricket ball that Harbhajan Singh bowled with, a pair of batting gloves from Sanjay Bangar besides a pat on the back from God, as he calls Sachin Tendulkar, and a word of recognition from coach John Wright.

But more than any of this, he will treasure memories of his stumping Virender Sehwag at the nets - twice in one session. Karthik is well aware that Sehwag has been stumped but once each in one-day internationals and Tests - both times against the West Indies by Ridley Jacobs off Carl Hooper.

There are many like him who take great pride in simply being of some help to the Indian cricketers at the camp, themselves picking up a bit of stardust along the way. But, in Delhi, a long way away from Indian probables’ camp, I bumped into Vijay Dahiya who has been introspecting on what went wrong for him to be out of favour.

To begin with, it was not his fault that he went out of the side after playing two Tests against Zimbabwe in November 2000 and the last of his 19 one-day internationals in April 2001. He now knows he did not have a great time in the last domestic season, having got just 282 runs in first-class cricket when Karnataka’s VS Thilak Naidu scored 817 and accounted for 39 victims to get into national reckoning.

He has promised himself that he will play for Delhi with a renewed resolve in the new season that beckons the first-class cricketers. Then again, he is aware that the wicket-keepers have not exactly been treated with kid gloves. Nayan Mongia, MSK Prasad, Sameer Dighe, Deep Dasgupta, Ajay Ratra and he have all been in the revolving door.

I remember asking selector, former India wicket-keeper Kiran More on the sidelines of the Irani Trophy match between Railways and Rest of India in Delhi a year ago if he had talked to Ratra after the Haryana lad was cold-shouldered even for that game -and More didn’t even have a contact number for Ratra.

Hopefully things will have changed. More was himself in charge of a wicket-keepers’ camp at the National Cricket Academy from June 16 to 21 last. As many as 11 stumpers were chosen for special attention in what was a step in the direction of grooming youngsters for one of the most thankless jobs on the cricket field.

Yet, by all accounts, Naidu and even Ratra, not to speak of the rest, now seem resigned to watching young Parthiv Patel keep wickets in Tests and Rahul Dravid continue in the limited-over version. If you went by what captain Sourav Ganguly said at the end of the training camp, Dravid would perforce continue to figure in the team’s scheme of things as the stumper since none of the wicket-keeper-batsmen seems capable of displacing the extra specialist batsman from the one-day XI.

In choosing Patel as the only wicket-keeper in the India A squad which toured England recently, the selectors advertised the fact that the Gujarat youngster would be an overwhelming favourite for the Tests. Despite such opportunities, it does seem that his batting has not quite matched the quality of his work behind the bails.

For all that, the most important words came from coach John Wright who gave us a state of fitness report on Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Ashish Nehra, having already clarified that Harbhajan Singh could bowl without a problem but had been kept away from the Challengers since the selectors wanted to play him first in a first-class tie.

Wright, of course, did not say much about the fortunes awaiting specialist wicket-keepers this season. Which takes us back to Ray Robinson’s theory of the stumpers being like office-boys - everyone knows that they are there but they are relegated to the penumbra until they make a mistake when the spotlight is turned on them.

K Karthik, an unabashed fan of Mongia’s work behind the stumps, does not have to worry. He has just come back to reality after spending the past few days in the company of the country’s best cricketers. His reward may not be an India cap but he is pretty contented with the stardust that he picked up at the camp.

By G Rajaraman