Indian cricket has always been riddled with countless tales of bravado and magic. But at times there have been stories, that won’t be pretty and would also hurt. There are players who overshot their bounds are comfortably cruising in the limelight while there have been tales that would probably narrate a much sadder version of the exact same unfolding, players who failed to grab the limelight despite all their laurels and triumphs in the tricolours.
There are players who have been hailed as heroes and yet there are players who have won us matches without making a single noise and yet somehow have faded away from the limelight. Here are five players who rocked the world in the Indian threads and yet somehow fell far behind the limelight.
#1 Suresh Raina
His tryst with the cricket team wasn’t as glamorous as you would want it to be and yet he played a role so crucial that allowed him to slot in the ODI cricket team and also share a decent frame in the T20Is. He played 226 ODIs, scored 5615 runs at an average of 35.31 with five centuries and 36 half-centuries. He ruled the T20I list with 1604 runs at an average of 29 that is deemed as very special numbers. Unfortunately, the kind of glory that he always deserved, it kept on eluding him.
#2 Gautam Gambhir
It is not that Gautam Gambhir wasn’t given any fame at all, but somehow the man who won two World Cup finals for India deserved more than what he got. The roles that he played were absolutely crucial and most importantly, they were under the pump. When the entire team started teetering, he would stand up and start dishing out those mighty blows, hammering the opposition out of contention. However, somehow he got to the fringes of center-stage in games that was seized by other equal contributions.
#3 VVS Laxman
The man who was the mother of all those players who never hogged the limelight, VVS Laxman continued to deliver his own brand of justice. He would rock and roll through ages of mediocrity in the cricket team where he would pair together with tail-enders and win matches for India. The 281 was just one of those glorious chapters while there were countless ones like that which were simply forgotten.
#4 Zaheer Khan
If Yuvraj Singh was the hero of 2011 World Cup, there was another man who was making all the right ripples in the same team and it was none other than ZAK. He would go onto claim 23 wickets and was present in the cricket team since the beginning of 2000 where he would be the man making all the right sets of noises. Rolling in the cherry through the defences of the batters, Zaheer Khan was one of those beasts in the Indian line-up who didn’t bag the limelight he deserved.
#5 Javagal Srinath
Still hailed as one of the finest bowlers in world cricket, somehow Srinath isn’t the name that people would talk about when we talk about fast bowlers. Still to bowl the fastest ball of Indian cricket, Srinath rocked Alistair Campbell brutally. Somehow the feeling is prevalent that the ace fast bowler would have done better if he was from this era in terms of limelight.
