5 Most Unlucky Cricketers Who Have Played For India Since 2000: The fact that India doesn’t have any dearth of cricketing talent is good in some way as the selectors are never short of options, but sometimes it turns out to be unfair for a few players as well, as they don’t get enough opportunities despite deserving the opportunities.
There have been a number of players in the last couple of decades who possessed a very impressive skill-set, but they didn’t get the opportunity to play for India on a regular basis. However, they were good enough to get into a lot of other international sides in the same time period.
Here are the 5 most unlucky Indian cricketers since 2000:
Amit Mishra
Amit Mishra produced some world-class performances for India from time to time, but his only shortcoming was his inconsistency. He has a big turning leg-break and a very potent googly as well and he still continues to bamboozle batsmen in domestic cricket and in the IPL, but he is not in the plans of the Indian selectors anymore.
While Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav are the first choice leggies for India, Rahul Chahar and Ravi Bishnoi are next in the pecking order.
Robin Uthappa
Robin Uthappa played some of his best cricket from 2014 to 2017, but since India had a very compact top-order during that time in white-ball cricket, Uthappa couldn’t break the door open despite scoring heavily season after season. Uthappa now seems to have past his peak and got released by his IPL franchise Kolkata Knight Riders last season. The right-hander might have played his last game for India already.
Wasim Jaffer
Wasim Jaffer was class personified, but he just couldn’t show the same kind of fluency at the international level that he showed at the domestic level despite having no apparent weaknesses.
Jaffer lost his place to Gautam Gambhir in the Indian test set-up and later with the emergence of Murali Vijay and Shikhar Dhawan, Jaffer was not able to make a comeback.
Dinesh Karthik
Dinesh Karthik would have played a number of games for India if he was not in the same age-group as MS Dhoni. Dhoni, because of how good he was, established himself in all formats of the game for India and there was just never an opportunity for any other wicket-keeper to replace him.
Karthik played a decent number of games for India as a specialist batsman, but couldn’t cement his place in the team for a long period of time.
Suresh Raina
Suresh Raina was a regular member of the Indian white-ball squads till the Champions Trophy 2013 and was fairly consistent as well, but he has been in and out of the Indian set-up ever since. His weakness against short-pitched bowling is one of the main reasons why he has lost his place in the Indian team. While he is still a good timer of the ball, he gets worked over way too often by quality fast bowlers, who bang the ball short with good direction.
