Five Indian Cricketers Who Didn't Get Captain's Backing

In India, cricket is much more than just a sport. Indian cricketers get fame, money and lead a happy life after playing for the national team, which obviously take a lot of talent. Eventually, also a little bit of luck, and some players are fortunate to have it all.

But some players despite being talented never get a continuous chance to play for the national team. Because they were never backed by their captains, or simply their skippers did not trust them enough to give them a consistent run in Team India.

Today, we will take a look at five such players who played for the national team and could have done remarkably well, only if their captains backed them.

Five Indian cricketers who didn’t get captain’s backing:

5) Manoj Tiwary

In a pure cricketing sense, a player is able to guarantee his place in the team for the next match, once he hits a century. However, this simple logic did not come off for Manoj Tiwary.

Despite scoring a century against the West Indies, he was not given a consistent run in the Indian team. The next chance that he got to play for India came two years later, after which he failed to justify his talent in international cricket.

So far, the 34-year-old has played just 12 ODI matches for India, and three T20Is, because he never had the backing from MS Dhoni.

In 2017, he had an excellent domestic season and proved his mettle as an all-rounder despite that, Tiwary wasn’t given a call-up to the national team.

4) Ambati Rayudu

Another batsman, another case of unfulfilled potential. Ambati Rayudu gave a great account of himself during India’s tour of New Zealand 2019, but after two bad games, he was ousted from the team.

The Men in Blue were in desperate need of a batsman who could perform at No. 4 slot, and Rayudu could have been that player, but he was never backed by Virat Kohli in the lead up to the 2019 ODI World Cup, and the lack of number four slot remained India’s Achilles heel there as well.

Rayudu found his way to the national team after a long run of consistent performances in the Indian Premier League(IPL) but never got the backing of his captain, and thus he never could live the dream of playing for the national team fully.

3) Amit Mishra

Amit Mishra’s performances as an Indian cricketer have never been bad, but he was never trusted fully by any of the captains he played under. He made his debut in national colours in 2003 and went on to play 22 Test matches, scalping 76 wickets.

In ODIs, Mishra has 36 caps and has 64 wickets to show for them. In T20Is, he played 10 times for team India and snared 16 wickets, despite all these stats, he never became the marquee spinner in the Indian set up.

After this, the 37-year-old decided to work the hard yards in domestic circuits, but failed to find a pathway back to the national team.

All of Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, Dhoni and Kohli never fully backed Mishra.

2) Ravichandran Ashwin

In the current scenario, Ravichandran Ashwin has failed to find a place for himself in the Indian team in limited-overs format despite being a loyal servant for years. He continues to play for the national team in the Test format but since quite some time, he has been overlooked in ODIs and T20Is.

In the recent past, Ashwin was named as the captain of Kings XI Punjab (KXIP), in the IPL, and he did reasonably well but still hasn’t won the backing of Virat Kohli in the limited-overs formats.

Having performed with the bat in his yesteryears, the 33-year-old will try and do well in the upcoming IPL season and possibly try to give the selectors a headache ahead of the T20 World Cup 2020 that will be played in Australia in October.

1) Ajinkya Rahane

Perhaps the biggest victim of not having the backing of your captain in recent years has been Ajinkya Rahane, who despite his obvious talent hasn’t featured regularly for the Indian team at all.

Rahane hit five centuries in his last ten ODI matches before being ousted from the Indian team and he is a constant presence in Test cricket these days, but in the limited-overs format, the Indian selectors seem to turn a blind eye towards him.

The 31-year-old belongs to that rare mould of batsmen who can play anywhere across the batting order as per the needs of the team. But still, he has not been backed by Kohli in recent times, which is why the right-handed batsman has been limited to just Test cricket.