Ajay Sharma - why didn't he play more tests?

[oitoitoi]

Ajay Sharma was featured in a cricinfo article today, I'd completely forgotten about the man, I always wondered why he didn't play more tests as a young player?

It's not like India had an embarrassment of riches in the early 90s?

Here are some links to his incredible domestic record:

Cricinfo - Players and Officials - Ajay Sharma

Cricinfo - Break-up of Ajay Sharma's First-class Statistics

He averaged no less than 80 in the Ranji trophy! Close to 60 in the Duleep trophy!

Though his eventual attempt to bribe a selector certainly raise question regarding his character.

 

[Manee]

He got one Test and it was adjudged that if you can't score runs against Patterson, Walsh and Davis, then you are simply not Test standard!

 

[oitoitoi]

Lol, India actually won that match too, never change a winning side...

Ajay Sharma and Vinod Kambli, 2 unfortunate men.

 

[DaRick]

He got one Test and it was adjudged that if you can't score runs against Patterson, Walsh and Davis, then you are simply not Test standard!

...and he wasn't even that terrible in that. Just mediocre.

I think we can safely put down his non-selection for most of his career to the stupidity of Indian selectors. Remember, these are the people who persisted with Ajit Agarkar for too long in Test matches and allowed other non-entities (Ganesh, Rathour, et.al) greater bites of the cherry.

 

[Richard]

Lol, India actually won that match too, never change a winning side...

Ajay Sharma and Vinod Kambli, 2 unfortunate men.

Kambli is more debateable as he was completely found-out after his phenomenal start and was a renowned slacker so thus was unlikely to have attempted to correct the faults in his game.

Either way, Sharma's case has always baffled me. I only came accross his name for the first time during the match-fixing scandal and it was only years later that I looked at his First-Class record. I was stunned.

S Sriram is another one in the same boat (averaged near to or over 60 for much of his career), and S Badrinath is rapidly heading the same way.

 

[oitoitoi]

Kambli is more debateable as he was completely found-out after his phenomenal start and was a renowned slacker so thus was unlikely to have attempted to correct the faults in his game.

Either way, Sharma's case has always baffled me. I only came accross his name for the first time during the match-fixing scandal and it was only years later that I looked at his First-Class record. I was stunned.

S Sriram is another one in the same boat (averaged near to or over 60 for much of his career), and S Badrinath is rapidly heading the same way.

Yeah Badri should be playing ahead of Yuvraj no problem. It's the old Chennai players thing, the same reason they didn't give Ramesh a proper chance even though he looked the part. I'm suprised they keep picking Karthik.

 

[Craig]

Happy 45th birthday Ajay Sharma.

 

[bagapath]

the middle order in the 80s Indian team was a settled one with amarnath, vengsarkar and azharuddin coming in at 3,4 and 5 followed by the all-rounders shastri and kapil dev. manjrekar took over the anchoring role from amarnath eventually. when sachin joined the team in '89 and srikkanth was fading out as opener shastri moved up the order to join sidhu.

the test ajay sharma got to play in was shastri's only test as skipper. he was standing in for the injured vengsarkar. once dilip retured to take back captaincy and his middle oder spot, out went ajay sharma. sachin joined the team in the next year and there was no scope for him to get back into the team.

ajay got to play in a few one day games later when azhar was made captain. but he had apaprently decided to concentrate on making money through match fixing and started using his contacts in the indian team for that purpose.

 

[Richard]

Yeah Badri should be playing ahead of Yuvraj no problem. It's the old Chennai players thing, the same reason they didn't give Ramesh a proper chance even though he looked the part. I'm suprised they keep picking Karthik.

When the next alternative is Parthiv Patel, I'm less surprised!

 

[DaRick]

When the next alternative is Parthiv Patel, I'm less surprised!

Really? Is he still that bad?

 

[Manee]

His keeping in his comeback Test was poor, to say the least.

 

[Arjun]

Ajay Sharma has been a bit of an enigma. How much value can he add to his place in the team? He's quite a prolific batsman, but there are a few others at the time. That middle-order was a well-settled one and getting in there was tough. He was a bit of a seam-up bowler, but there were better options even then.

Yeah Badri should be playing ahead of Yuvraj no problem. It's the old Chennai players thing, the same reason they didn't give Ramesh a proper chance even though he looked the part. I'm suprised they keep picking Karthik.

That may have been the scene then, but there's no such Chennai Players Thing these days. We've seen Ramesh get more than a few matches, but he added little value, as also his partner Das. We've seen Badani get ample opportunities in ODI cricket, and not surprisingly, the Indians couldn't win any ODI tournament in which he figured. They gave Balaji an extended run in both Tests and ODIs and he did a good job. We still find Karthik as the top option as a stand-in wicketkeeper. TN have contributed several players over the years, so there's nothing that suggests they're sidelined for nothing- that's happened only to Central and Eastern teams, and even now, champion teams like Mumbai and Delhi haven't been represented adequately.

Kambli is more debateable as he was completely found-out after his phenomenal start and was a renowned slacker so thus was unlikely to have attempted to correct the faults in his game.

Kambli had attitude problems. We heard of him get into a drunk fight with his wife in the mid-1990s, then saw him get teary-eyed on camera a little later.

 

[SJS]

Ajay Sharma was featured in a cricinfo article today, I'd completely forgotten about the man, I always wondered why he didn't play more tests as a young player?

It's not like India had an embarrassment of riches in the early 90s?

Here are some links to his incredible domestic record:

Cricinfo - Players and Officials - Ajay Sharma

Cricinfo - Break-up of Ajay Sharma's First-class Statistics

He averaged no less than 80 in the Ranji trophy! Close to 60 in the Duleep trophy!

Though his eventual attempt to bribe a selector certainly raise question regarding his character.

. . . because there is more money to be made fixing odi's than fixing Test matches

 

[sudhindra9]

Was he really involved in match fixing scandals ???????

 

[oitoitoi]

Was he really involved in match fixing scandals ???????

I thought he'd "just" tried to bribe a selector.

 

[Richard]

Ajay Sharma is one of the most notorious individuals in the match-fixing saga - not because he fixed many games as Cronje and Azharuddin did, but because he started the whole ball rolling. Would someone else have started it if he hadn't? Of course they would, the game simply did not have the defences in place to fight bookmakers off in the 1970s and 1980s.

Nonetheless, I'm really not sure Sharma's match-fixing was any form of reason why he didn't play more Tests. In fact, it's conceivable that it worked the other way.

I've no sympathy with match-fixers or South African Rebel tourists, they made their beds and can lie on them - they knew the consequences their actions were going to result in and they elected to take those actions nonetheless. But I understand the frustration that some (not all) felt at being unable to force their way into teams they felt the should have, and the allure of what, relatively speaking, were huge payoffs. I can understand the reasons they made the choice to put their own financial gains above the game. But it's always disappointing when such things happen, because we expect - possibly unfairly - that high-profile sportsmen are also shining examples to the public.

Wasn't it Vinyak Mane or someone who tried bribing selectors?

 

[Jungle Jumbo]

Abhijit Kale

With a record like that, he shouldn't have had to bribe selectors either.

 

[Richard]

I knew it was someone who played against us on that 2001/02 tour.

 

[Krishna_j]

Ajay Sharma got a good run in ODI and even won the man of the match including one which i watched against Aus in bangalore in 1989 where he shone as a batsman.

however is SLA was never test class and with Ravi Shastri firmly entrenched as a batsman with SLA as a bonus - he was never going to play too much of test cricket .

He tarnished his image with the match fixing scandal and probably set Manoj Prabhakar and Azhar on their deplorable paths.

 

[Senile Sentry]

Such a sad ending. possesses the third best avg for any FC cricketer who played 'enough' number of games to constitute a valid stat sample.