The decision to pick Sam Curran as Sunday’s man of the match in Pune didn’t go down well with India skipper Virat Kohli, who felt Thakur deserved it, but it’s happened before
India pacer Shardul Thakur during the limited overs series against England. Pic/AFP
Virat Kohli was no fence sitter when he admitted to being surprised at his pace bowler Shardul Thakur not getting the man of the match award in the series-winning ODI against England on Sunday. Thakur scored 30 off 21 balls with three sixes and a four, before claiming four wickets in a tight finish under the Pune floodlights.
The India captain also felt Bhuvneshwar Kumar ought to have been given the man of the series honour. Sam Curran, who very nearly won the game for his country with his 83-ball 95, claimed the award for the match, while teammate Jonny Bairstow walked away with the prize for the series. Award winners are picked by the television commentators.
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As for Thakur, he had also put himself into contention for the man of the match award after his all-round heroics (seven wickets and an invaluable 67 in India’s first innings) before Rishabh Pant’s blistering, unbeaten 89 helped India to a three-wicket win over Australia in Brisbane. It was here in January when the Border-Gavaskar Trophy became the property of the visitors yet again. So, Thakur shouldn’t be grudged if he believes he has missed out on two man of the match awards.
I spoke to West Indies pace legend Andy Roberts on Tuesday night to ask him how he felt when the man of the match award went to Sarfaraz Nawaz as himself and Deryck Murray pulled victory from the jaws of defeat against Pakistan in a 1975 World Cup match at Birmingham. Chasing 267 for victory, the eventual World Cup champions achieved the target with one wicket to spare with Murray and Roberts staying unbeaten with 61 and 24 respectively. “Tom Graveney [the man of the match adjudicator] had decided that Sarfaraz would be the man of the match and headed to the bar,” said Roberts, implying that the former England batting great of the 1950s and 1960s did not watch the West Indian revival once they were reduced to 203 for nine. However, the Antiguan agreed with the decision to award Curran on Sunday. “Look, I don’t see anything wrong in that decision because the impact and not result matters. Curran got England back in the game from nowhere,” he stressed, something that he and Murray did on June 11, 1975 when Sarfaraz sent back the West Indies’ top three — Roy Fredericks, Gordon Greenidge and Alvin Kallicharran before Vanburn Holder became his fourth victim.
Roberts also did not agree with the choice of Viv Richards being declared man of the match in the 1979 World Cup final against England at Lord’s. “A fellow Antiguan notwithstanding, the award should have gone to Collis King (86 off 66 balls) and not Viv, although he scored a century (unbeaten 138 off 157 balls). It was Collis who transformed that final,” Roberts told me.
Although the choice of Richards for the 1979 World Cup final was not embarrassing, Dilip Vengsarkar not getting the award for his masterly 166 on a Cuttack minefield in the third Test of the 1986-87 series against the Sri Lankans was stunning. The Indians, led by Kapil Dev, earned an innings victory and the man of the match award was presented to the skipper for his innings of 60 and five wickets in the match. “Vengsarkar played in an exemplary manner to make 166. The seven-hour vigil by Vengsarkar helped India make 400. Vengsarkar had reason to feel that he should have been the man of the match.
He was disappointed when the prize went to India’s skipper, Kapil Dev,” wrote R Mohan in Indian Cricket annual 1987. And the occasion where a three-figure score mattered for an award despite it being in a losing cause was when Manoj Prabhakar’s ODI hundred earned him post-match honours against Pakistan at Jamshedpur. Wonder what Javed Miandad felt about that adjudication because he stayed unbeaten on 78 to guide the visitors to a win in the final over the game, which had been reduced to 44 overs-a-side.
Nine years earlier in Adelaide, Gundappa Viswanath was presented the man of the match award for his 89 and 73 in the fifth and final Test of the 1977-78 series, which Australia won 3-2. According to Brian Bavin, who reported the engrossing Test series for World Cricket Digest, those two knocks were, “great innings and he well deserved the honour, but this game had heroes aplenty.” Australia’s skipper Bob Simpson and future captain Graham Yallop scored centuries in this memorable Test.
More recently, Sanjay Manjrekar revealed to sportskeeda.com how Geoff Boycott, the adjudicator of the man of the match award for the 1990 India v England Texaco Trophy at Leeds, came to the dressing room to tell him that he played a “very important” innings of 82 to help India win by six wickets but the award would go to Anil Kumble. The rookie India leggie had dismissed Robin Smith and David Gower to return with figures of 11-2-29-2.
The last ODI at Pune reminded me of the fifth India v Sri Lanka ODI which I witnessed as a spectator at the Wankhede Stadium in early 1987. Sri Lanka were chasing a massive target of 300 set by India thanks to Mohammed Azharuddin’s 94-ball 108 not out. The Lankans could have pulled off an incredible victory had opener Roshan Mahanama not been run out for 98 and Asanka Gurusinha kept up the tempo in his 34-ball 52 in the 40-over game. They fell 10 short and I can never forget Mahanama walking back to the dressing room utterly dejected; his Fred Perry shirt wet with perspiration. Like Curran on Sunday, he claimed the man of the match prize despite ending up on the losing side. And like we felt of Mahanama then, we expect Thakur to be a true asset to the Indian cricket team.
mid-day’s group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance. He tweets @ClaytonMurzello. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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