Former India pacer Venkatesh Prasad has hogged plenty of headlines in the past few days. Apart from his severe, but logical and stats-based, criticism – or you can say opinion – of India opener KL Rahul, Venkatesh has also indulged in a war or words with Aakash Chopra – they may disagree that it’s not a “war” of words, but it seems so.
Prasad has called up the persistent selection of KL Rahul in the Indian Test team, while pointing out that more in-form batters likes Shubman Gill, who is on the bench for the two Tests against Australia, and Sarfaraz Khan and Mayank Agarawal, both of whom had a bumper Ranji season, were kept out because of “favoritism” toward KL Rahul.
After being given another “stat-based” opinion and reply from Aakash Chopra, who pointed out that not only KL Rahul’s average away from home in recent years is on par with the other Indian batters, but also that Prasad was peddling some sort of agenda against Rahul. And the 56-year-old former pacer has replied back to Chopra, while also digging up an old tweet from Chopra where the former batsman trolled “talented” Rohit Sharma’s selection.
Anyway, since Venkatesh Prasad has heavily been in the news in the last week or so, we thought let us recall some of his career achievements:
Venkatesh Prasad featured in 33 Tests for India, picking up 96 wickets at an average of 35.
In 161 ODIs, the Karnataka pacer took 196 wickets at 32. His international career spanned from 1994 to 2001.
The most memorable moment of Venkatesh Prasad in the minds of Indian fans is when he bowled Pakistan batsman Aamir Sohail in the 1996 World Cup, right after the left-handed batsman had taunted Prasad after hitting a boundary.
Prasad snapped up 361 first-class wickets and 295 List-A wickets.
After retirement, he took to coaching, training the Under-19 side and later taking over as coach of his state side Karnataka. Prasad was then appointed India’s bowling coach in May 2007.
He was in the coaching staff when India won the 2007 T20 World Cup in South Africa, and is renowned specifically for telling the players to practice for the bowl-out, and which came to use when India and Pakistan’s group match was tied and went to bowl-out, which India won.
He also coached the Indian bowlers to Test series wins in England and New Zealand.
Venkatesh Prasad also worked as a bowling coach in the IPL franchise Chennai Super Kings.
Here are some more of achievements and awards of Venkatesh Prasad:
Awarded the Ceat International Cricketer of the Year award in 1996-97
Won the Man of the Match award in India vs. England One Day International (ODI) match held at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium, UAE, in the 1998-99 series.
Won the Man of the Match award in India vs. Pakistan ODI match in the 1999 Cricket World Cup at Old Trafford, Manchester, England.
Honored with the prestigious Arjuna Award in the year 2000
