Not the usual type
Naman Ojha, India’s new ’keeper, is not that talkative behind the stumps, but he more than makes up for it with his performance.
Modern wicketkeepers pride in being chirpy rascals. Doesn’t matter the score is 300/2. If the gloveman is upbeat, the team fakes a smile. Naman Ojha is cut from a different cloth. This Madhya Pradesh cricketer is so unfashionably quiet and immune to gibes that he’s occasionally perceived as linguistically challenged.
Services tried eliciting a response during a Ranji match at Palam in 2013. The verbals began: he can’t control his shots, soon he’ll lob one in the air. “Naman was so unmoved, as though he’d emerged from a hermitage. If Wriddhiman Saha is an introvert, this bloke is a loner,” a Services player confided. “Then he stung us with a breezy double hundred. Just goes to show that you needn’t be a firebrand to be competitive.”
Yet he remains distant second in the keepers’ pecking order after Saha. His other contemporaries Dinesh Karthik has tapered off and Sanju Samson isn’t even an ODI back-up with the gloves. Ojha, too, is not a clean wicketkeeper by along shot.
There was a time he would grab the ball with hard hands. Since he’s about six feet, he would stand slightly earlier, doubling the load on his lower body. The makeover was done under Sanjay Jagdale’s watch. Hours of swimming was one way to enhance his core strength and make him ‘keeping fit’ for awhole day. And then Kiran More took him under his wing.
“He would have injuries on his thumb and index finger,” Kiran More told Mirror. “His hand position was faulty. So plenty of balls would bounce off his palms. He had no stability or balance in stance which is a must like in batting. So we worked on is positioning to catch the ball. Keeping is much like fast-bowling. Without a sound action, you could get injured. He was determined to rectify them.”
While the rough edges in his wicketkeeping are still being smoothed out, his batting has reached a different plane. His consistency has been a revelation. If over 800 runs in the 2013-14 Ranji season was the beginning of a run glut, then the tour of Australia for India ‘A’ made his case irresistible. Against the likes of Nathan Lyon, James Faulkner, Moises Henriques and Ben Cutting, he smacked a double ton and two centuries, in all 430 runs in three innings.
The windfall season may not have been achieved without a visit to Praveen Amre’s battling clinic. There throwdowns with synthetic balls sharpened his eye, now he was ready for the quantum leap.
“I told him mere hundreds wouldn’t be sufficient. It’s only when you get huge knocks that your name will be discussed,” said Lalchand Rajput, India ‘A’ coach on the Australia tour. “He was sound on the back-foot. He could play the cut and pull with panache. Occasionally he would top-edge the pull. I wanted him to be solid, so I made him follow a commandment. He was allowed to pull balls that were only below the eye.”
Hrishikesh Kanitkar knows Ojha as an instinctive player. He said, “I vividly remember a Ranji game for Madhya Pradesh against Assam in 2008. Everyone looked ill at ease on a green top. And this boy got a hundred playing shots with instincts. We were just floored by his skills.”
With Ojha in the mix, India’s lowerorder looks that much sounder. He’s already 32, considered an overripe age and not a long-term investment. For Ojha though, the time may be just right.
Modern wicketkeepers pride in being chirpy rascals. Doesn’t matter the score is 300/2. If the gloveman is upbeat, the team fakes a smile. Naman Ojha is cut from a different cloth. This Madhya Pradesh cricketer is so unfashionably quiet and immune to gibes that he’s occasionally perceived as linguistically challenged.
Services tried eliciting a response during a Ranji match at Palam in 2013. The verbals began: he can’t control his shots, soon he’ll lob one in the air. “Naman was so unmoved, as though he’d emerged from a hermitage. If Wriddhiman Saha is an introvert, this bloke is a loner,” a Services player confided. “Then he stung us with a breezy double hundred. Just goes to show that you needn’t be a firebrand to be competitive.”
Indian cricket will field one of its best-behaved keepers in a long time. Saha’s hamstring has finally opened the channel for Ojha’s India debut in the third Test against Lanka. Remember he was in the squad for the last two Tests in England as Saha’s back-up.
Yet he remains distant second in the keepers’ pecking order after Saha. His other contemporaries Dinesh Karthik has tapered off and Sanju Samson isn’t even an ODI back-up with the gloves. Ojha, too, is not a clean wicketkeeper by along shot.
There was a time he would grab the ball with hard hands. Since he’s about six feet, he would stand slightly earlier, doubling the load on his lower body. The makeover was done under Sanjay Jagdale’s watch. Hours of swimming was one way to enhance his core strength and make him ‘keeping fit’ for awhole day. And then Kiran More took him under his wing.
“He would have injuries on his thumb and index finger,” Kiran More told Mirror. “His hand position was faulty. So plenty of balls would bounce off his palms. He had no stability or balance in stance which is a must like in batting. So we worked on is positioning to catch the ball. Keeping is much like fast-bowling. Without a sound action, you could get injured. He was determined to rectify them.”
While the rough edges in his wicketkeeping are still being smoothed out, his batting has reached a different plane. His consistency has been a revelation. If over 800 runs in the 2013-14 Ranji season was the beginning of a run glut, then the tour of Australia for India ‘A’ made his case irresistible. Against the likes of Nathan Lyon, James Faulkner, Moises Henriques and Ben Cutting, he smacked a double ton and two centuries, in all 430 runs in three innings.
The windfall season may not have been achieved without a visit to Praveen Amre’s battling clinic. There throwdowns with synthetic balls sharpened his eye, now he was ready for the quantum leap.
“I told him mere hundreds wouldn’t be sufficient. It’s only when you get huge knocks that your name will be discussed,” said Lalchand Rajput, India ‘A’ coach on the Australia tour. “He was sound on the back-foot. He could play the cut and pull with panache. Occasionally he would top-edge the pull. I wanted him to be solid, so I made him follow a commandment. He was allowed to pull balls that were only below the eye.”
Hrishikesh Kanitkar knows Ojha as an instinctive player. He said, “I vividly remember a Ranji game for Madhya Pradesh against Assam in 2008. Everyone looked ill at ease on a green top. And this boy got a hundred playing shots with instincts. We were just floored by his skills.”
With Ojha in the mix, India’s lowerorder looks that much sounder. He’s already 32, considered an overripe age and not a long-term investment. For Ojha though, the time may be just right.
