Cricketer Ambati Rayudu’s decision to quit all forms of the game brings a glorious innings in cricket to a premature end. Is it because of a fall-out between the Rayudu and BCCI, or is it sheer bad timing from the cricketer?
The Guntur-born batsman was seen as India’s No. 4 batsman and featured for the Indian team in 55 ODIs and 6 T20Is in his six-year stint with the national team. He scored three centuries and 10 fifties and had an impressive strike rate of 79.04 in ODIs. But at the end of it all, do stats score over form in current times?
Indian cricket has evolved over the years in every way “ from fitness, mental-preparedness, strategising and planning. The days where players hung on to their positions in teams despite a string of failure are behind us. Players like Ravi Shastri, Gavaskar and many others had several lean patches in their careers, but their monumental success stories help them stay put in the team. The script is vastly different now. Every aspect of a player is under a scanner from time to time. The competition is huge with more players waiting to make the cut, and so is the challenge to find a place
in the team.
Rayudu’s decision to retire ‘hurt’ from all forms of cricket has been attributed to his exclusion from the world cup. The selection panel headed by MSK Prasad preferred the highly-influential Vijay Shankar over Rayudu for what was termed as a three-dimensional benefit to the team. And Rayudu played it with a straight bat tweeting “just ordered a set of 3-D glasses to watch the world cup”. This was a moment when boundaries were set and Rayudu put himself on a collision course.
Rayudu’s resentment was obvious since he was not even considered when Shankar was ruled out. Mayank Agarwal was preferred ahead of him despite not even featuring in the reserves. Rayudu had reasons to feel distraught over being ignored for the showpiece event.
But his decision to quit the sport altogether doesn’t speak well of a fighter that Rayudu was on the cricket field. Putting a sudden end to one’s career at age 33 is an intolerant act which smacks of immaturity. There was still time where he could have allowed his bat to do the talking. This is meek surrender and cannot be seen as heroic.
Stars are known for their grit and fighting spirit, they are remembered when they bounce back every time they stumble. Take the case of Pakistan’s star pacer, Mohammad Amir who missed the 2011 and 2015 World Cup due to a five-year ban on match fixing imposed in 2010. He returned to the 2019 world cup as one of feared frontline pace bowlers of Pakistan, even by Kohli’s standards.
Rayudu exit signals an era where players are not going to take the board’s decisions lying down. Gone are the days where players disappeared into oblivion without even putting up a token of resistance. Now, every action in cricket is being questioned and every decision is seen with a suspicion of biases. And this doesn’t augur well for Indian cricket.
