Cricket: Current Players Who Represent The Best Of Republic of India!
Current Players Who Represent The Best Of Republic of India!
When you come to India, you don’t only discover a great melange of colour, cinema and custom; you discover what is, arguably speaking, the other great C: Cricket.
India’s Cricket is a collection of talent, hope and the ability to do the unprecedented.
The land of the Great Master Blaster, one that’s birthed both the Yuvraj as well as the Maharaj has truly come of age.
Its domestic game speaks of valuable talents and no longer is the attention of the fan only skewed to the famous men’s sport with exceptional talents in women’s game etching a bold new chapter for Indian cricket.
But on this date and age, which eleven names arguably sum up the great Republic of Cricket that is India? Let’s visit a prestigious 11-talent list:
Suryakumar Yadav
Heaves over mid-wicket! Lofted strokes over cover! Giant hits over the fence over long on! What’s more? Magnificently manoeuvered half-a-dozens over the fine leg region; Suryakumar Yadav has been the wrecker in chief of more white-ball units than you can imagine in India’s recent past.
Truthfully speaking, even the Sky’s not the limit for Sky, i.e., Suryakumar Yadav, the man who, in no time at all, has notched up three T20I centuries in a brief but ballooning India career.
In 16 of his 43 T20I innings so far, Sky has struck either a fifty or a century for India, which is an incredible result for a cricketer who wasn’t given that many opportunities to prove himself early on.
But ever since the selectors have brought him on, circa March 2021, India have seemed a more powerful unit than ever before, Surya attacking the world’s foremost with hunger and venom.
The gum-chewing calm-headed cricketer has really made Indian cricket a fascinating tale of several successes in recent times and what the powerhouse of the sport needs from its capable player are more knocks such as that 55-ball-117 against England, a century that left everyone stunned last year.
Harmanpreet Kaur
The world’s attention changed for the better towards the women’s game, arguably saying, at the wake of a scintillating knock played a little over half a decade back in the day and that too, in the preeminent format of ODI Cricket: the World Cup.
As Harmanpreet Kaur waged a solo and must it be said, a mighty fine assault against the Aussies of all line-ups, given her smashing 171 not out, women’s cricket turned a bright golden chapter and truly came of age.
It made the fan who only cared for the men’s game sit back and take notice of the serious accomplishments that women were capable of in the great game.
Today, over 5 years down the line and with a golden generation of Indian greats including Mithali and Jhulan in the dugout for good, Harmanpreet Kaur, once again, has the world’s attention resting on her.
Her brute and rhythmic batting amplified by daring and guile with strokes on either side of the wicket make her a champion batter. India’s captain, it can be said, will be raring to go as yet another chance at taking a shot at a world cup beckons with the T20 WC about to begin soon in the land of the Protea fire.
Can Harman’s heroics help turn a massive tide towards her Team India? The right hander has already stroked over 6,200 runs in the white-ball game for her country along with 26 fifties.
The batsman looks set, the over just begins, all eyes are on the 22 yards and in comes Kuldeep Yadav with a typically flighted delivery to enforce an error from the end of the willow-wielder.
The more he tosses his left-arm Chinaman deliveries up, the more they fall prey to the temptation of going big, succeeding only to get holed out in the outfield.
Truth be told, each time Kuldeep Yadav comes into bowl, it seems that he’s going to strike big for India. Though he goes for a few runs more than expected in some white-ball contests, the regular ability to claw India back into a game at the back of his brilliant spin bowling makes him a durable competitor.
Fine on his own as it is, Kuldeep becomes a force to be reckoned with when India captain Rohit Sharma brings him on to attack with Chahal bowling in tandem from the other end.
May that be the case for long!
Richa Ghosh can do a bit of it all for the Indian women’s stable; she can keep wickets, effect quick and agile dismissals, up the ante of run scoring, collect vital runs down the order and also, turn a contest at the back of brute hitting on her own.
The latter is what she ably demonstrated recently against the mighty Aussies in a T20I held at Mumbai where the likes of Schutt, Gardner and Perry herself were in for a surprise.
One of the finest wicket-keeping batters in a long time, Richa Ghosh’s enthusiasm for the game is infectious and her presence in a highly competitive line-up adds more bite to a strong line-up.
During 2022, she played her maiden women’s ODI world cup and this year, she’s expected to do wonders for her country in the highest form of the shorter format: the T20I women’s World Cup due to be played in South Africa.
For a batsman about whom it was feared was over and well beyond his best days, the way Virat Kohli has hit back rich form in international cricket is an enthralling and inspiring saga in itself.
A versatile batsman capable of legendary outings with the bat, while Kohli may still yearn for that great form in Test match cricket, his recent outings in white-ball contests suggest that India’s celebrated Tiger is roaring again and just in time for the mega soon-to-begin ODI world cup on home turf.
For someone who nearly single-handedly won India that truly unforgettable contest against Pakistan in the T20 World Cup in 2022, Virat Kohli will look to sign off in grand fashion in cricket’s premier cup poised for 2023.
And truth be told, the fan would want nothing else other than runs flowing from the MRF-emblazoned blade of a giant killer.
It’s not a cricket match if Deepti Sharma isn’t making news. Coming to light very recently, yet again, in the context of her Mankading of England’s Charlotte Dean, the month of September 2022, truth be told, was largely about Agra’s finest export to the world of Indian Cricket.
Sharma is a thinking cricketer renowned for her consistent returns for her stable as both- a handy batter as well as a spinner to reckon with.
During crunch situations when Team India need quick wickets to keep up the ante of pressure, Sharma is called on to do the job and rarely does she disappoint.
A fine accumulator runs instead of being a thrasher of the white ball, the experienced campaigner is within striking distance of reaching 2,000 ODI runs and needs only 102 runs, to be precise, to strike 1000 T20I runs for India.
Overall, she’s picked 188 international wickets for her country, which makes her a handy customer with the white-ball. With an exposure of 164 white-ball contests against her name, Deepti Sharma is truly a force to reckon with for India and one whose best days lie ahead of her.
Siraj with his fast and clean run-up and the ability to generate bounce and move the ball has troubled batters for a while. He’s been successful on away tours such as Australia and been a force to reckon with on domestic conditions.
Having picked up 14 wickets from his last five ODI’s have made the right arm medium pacer the numer uno force on the revered ICC ODI rankings, a delightful result for a competitive fast bowler.
But what Mohd. Siraj’s rise truly means that the Indian bowling cauldron is no longer only responsible for the services of Jasprit Bumrah to excel and that the others too, have in them to spark the fire that India craves.
A thinking custodian, Siraj can put a tight lid on run-scoring and can often claw back soaring run-rates thanks to his impressive talent of picking wickets in a quick duration of time.
The right-armer is actually just five shy of hitting a century of international wickets for India. That’s when his career isn’t really that old having begun playing regularly from 2019 onwards.
Women’s cricket becomes an even more beautiful sight with Smriti Mandhana, among the most destructive batters around, in full flow. And this, by the way, is no random sight; as more and more opponents challenge India’s might in the game we so love, Smriti Mandhana’s bat oozes fire as it did in the 2018 away tour to South Africa, where a career-best 135 ripped apart a Protea line up featuring Khaka, Klaas, Van Niekerk and Luus.
The dominant left-hander famed for giving flying starts to India has already accumulated north of 5,700 runs in limited-overs cricket and as the women’s game prepares to play more Tests than ever, it can be expected that Mandhana will be ready to fire.
Though it must be said that with the rise of batters of the class of Smriti Mandhana, the tag of being a giant attacker of the cricket ball no longer only features accomplished names such as Australia’s Alyssa Healy or Windies’ Hayley Matthews or the White Ferns’ Sophie Devine.
If there’s a cricketer whose name is being spoken about with great interest and candour everywhere in the country, whose talent is knocking the doors of the revered BCCI, then it’s surely that of the Mumbai-born Sarfaraz Khan.
Here’s a cricketer who’s as powerful as he is young and promising.
The 25-year-old has made killing bowlers in the domestic annals of the game an intrepid habit having struck bowlers to garner an average of 122 in the 2021-22 Ranji Trophy.
But despite missing out and sadly so, from representing his country for the contests against Bangladesh and as seen recently, New Zealand, selectors admit that Sarfaraz will soon wear the Indian jersey.
Well, on January 26, the fine occasion of the country’s Republic Day, let us pray that the dream of playing for India truly comes alive for Khan.
Renuka Singh
Indian Women’s stable is fortunate to have finally found a probing fast bowler that seems to have the potential in her to carry forward the great legacy created by legend Jhulan Goswami.
Renuka Singh’s repertoire isn’t as much about brute pace as it is about movement off the pitch and the perfect seam position. With the ability to move the ball into the batter, Singh has created doubt and often, confusion into the minds of some of the leading forces in the women’s game whether to leave or play at a delivery.
The end result, however, of such befuddlement is the delightful sight of the stumps up in flays, which inadvertently brings about a cheerful smile from the 26-year-old from Himachal Pradesh.
Having already picked 18 wickets from 7 ODI’s, Renuka Singh has also cleverly adapted to the needs of the shortest format, in which she’s snatched 23 wickets, her overall tally thereby in touching distance of 50 limited-overs wickets.
With a painfully correct technique in Test match cricket, great powers of concentration and the ability to stay put for long long periods of time, Pujara is often India’s last man standing in the five-day format.
He proved just that in his most recent Test outing where a quintessentially focused and dogged ton saved the day for India in Bangladesh.
While The Gabba triumph may always be remembered for Pant’s dashing exploits with the bat, credit will always be given to India’s famous number 3 for enduring body blows and on several occasions that quite simply blunted Australia’s express pace attack comprising Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood.
A batsman of resolve and patience, Pujara already owns an envy-inspiring record; that of facing 525 deliveries in a single Test inning, the most faced by a cricketer ever.
Even at 35 and with over 7,000 Test runs against him in a career that’s spanned over twelve years, Pujara is capable of repeating that hallmark effort.
