A strong case for Naman Ojha

Naman Ojha is a guy from an ordinary town of MP. MP in 90s was a strong Ranji team under Sandip Patil and then Chandu Pandit. In 2000s the team lost its strength and now lies in the plate league. So weak that even Himachal beats it in the Ranji league.

One season Hrishikesh Kanetkar, the Dhaaka bounary guy captained MP and it was thought that it would lead to some change of fortunes for the team, alas that was wrong. Narendra Hirwani, the guy who took 16 Windies wkts in only Test Shastri captained for India in 1987-88 is the most famous Test cricketer of the state in modern era.

Not to forget that the city of Indore gave India its first Test skipper in CK Nayadu in 1932 tour of England and since then till the Independence the Holkars had a strong team that often posed challenge to Mumbai team (then Bombay)…..

So Ojha has shone in this IPL and has played 2 blistering innings. He is a wicketkeeper and can be a very good backup to MSD….Only if he is strongly represented by Hirwani and Srikanth, the Tamilian croon who pushes a TN player in national side out of nowhere listenes.

He is far better than Dinesh Karthik, a lot is being written on him on this blog.  However this blog is not optimistic that Ojha would get a decent chance at the top just like the other players from MP have got. Khurasiya, Hirwani and Rajesh Chauhan are the only players in last 20 years to play for India from MP….Agreed the talent was not there, but then the likes of R Sharma and Dinesh Karthik have been given longer run than they deserved. Then why not Ojha ?