On a day two omissions from the list of centrally-contracted players with the BCCI made headlines, another passed by rather quietly. Unlike in the cases of Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan, few noticed that Umesh Yadav had also been left without an annual contract in any of the four categories.
Umesh’s exclusion was on the cards and in accordance with the decision not to offer renewals to Cheteshwar Pujara, Shikhar Dhawan and Yuzvendra Chahal. He had not been in India reckoning for a while and made his last international appearance at the ICC World Test Championship final last June in England.
That Umesh is still chugging on in the domestic circuit is the story. He is putting in the hard yards and doing his job. The 24 wickets he took in six Ranji Trophy matches played a part in Vidarbha’s entry into the semi-finals of India’s premier first-class competition. Umesh is 36. Iyer and Kishan — at the eye of a storm for ‘neglecting’ Ranji Trophy and axed due to that — are 29 and 25, respectively.
The situation was different for Umesh and the younger guns, who are superstars in the India Premier League (IPL). India players not in the team and ageing sometimes get a feeling that they may not be recalled. They often skip the rigours of four-day matches (Ranji Trophy played over five days from quarter-finals) in non-descript venues sans the facilities they get in international games.
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Umesh couldn’t have been faulted for thinking that he has no motivation left. He also has an IPL contract. Having made his international debut in May 2010 and been part of ups and downs at the top level, he has seen everything and played his part in some memorable outings.
He was in the pace attack which made India a different kind of a force. For some reason, his exploits at home remain understated. He was deceptively menacing on Indian pitches. Pace, conventional out-swing, reverse swing, awkward deviations off the surface, ability to hit the stumps and energy made him a special bowler.
Few can match his record in India — 139 wickets in 32 Tests and average of 25.88. Compare it with his overseas figures of 69 wickets in 25 Tests at 38.39 and see how much more effective he was on home soil, despite playing in the company of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja. Even in the pace department, he was not a regular all the time.
For a player like Umesh to continue in Ranji Trophy and help his team reach the semi-finals assume significance because this is a passage of time when disinterest in low-profile tournaments has raised eyebrows in the BCCI. It also shows Umesh’s attachment to the first-class team which gave him a platform and his hunger for what he likes doing and has done all his life.
Being dropped from the list of contracted players was an ironical yet appropriate occasion to remember the contribution and zest of Umesh the workhorse. At the wrong side of the 30s, he could have told himself that he had had enough. Refusal to do that shows the steel in the system of this son of a coalminer.
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