Underrated? - Srinivas Venkataraghavan

Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan – amongst the greatest people involved in the game of cricket. He has done basically everything related to cricket.

He is one of the technically most knowledgeable people in the world of cricket. It is for this reason that he is the Director of umpires in India and is also part of a host of technical committees. He is versatile.

This fact I borrow from Cricinfo – Venkat has adorned nine roles in all in cricket: player, captain, manager, administrator, selector, columnist, expert television commentator, match referee and umpire. Yes. That is all. He holds the world record for the only person to be in the Elite Panel of Match referees and umpires. He officiated with distinction. He officiated along with the greats like Shepherd and Bucknor.

Venkat was also one of the very intelligent off spinners and is a part of the famed spin quartet of the 1960s and 70s. Venkat got a lot of rip on the ball and brought it sharply into the batsman. Apart from the occasional short one, he was very competent. He was extremely unlucky too at times. Bedi and Chandrasekhar were the attacking spinners and were usually brought in before Venkat and it was only later when either there was not much to do or lot of damage already done that Venkat got to bowl. He always bowled at the ‘other end.’ Nevertheless, Venkat was successful and that usual occurrence of the ball coming into the batsman with Solkar diving in from short leg to pick up yet another good catch is a stamp on any cricket connoisseur’s memory. He also had a vicious wrong one. As intelligent as he is, he bowled to his role in test matches - where he was not the spearhead - by bowling flat and flighted the ball in Ranji games where he assumed the lead role.

What has Venkat been up to recently? He was probably the most inconspicuous member of the squad that was supposed to pick a coach for the Indian team.-BS

Articles to read: The many avatars of Srinivas Venkataraghavan on Cricinfo.