Vikram Rathour, the former India batting coach and selector, was a feared batter during his playing days. He played for Himachal Pradesh and Punjab in Indian domestic cricket and while his India career failed to take off, he was amazing in domestic matches.
Rathour played 146 FC matches, scoring 11473 runs with 33 centuries at an average of 49.66 and best score of 254. He also played 99 List-A games, scoring 3161 runs with 7 centuries. His career spanned from 1988-2003.
For India, Rathour played 6 Tests and 7 ODIs, scoring 131 and 193 runs respectively. He hit two half-centuries in ODIs, while his best score in Tests was 44. He had made his Test debut in 1996 against England alongside Paras Mhambrey, Venkatesh Prasad, and Sunil Joshi in Birmingham.
It was the same series in which Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid also started their India Test careers, as Ganguly had previously played a couple of ODIs in 1992.
‘We won’t play; match haar jayenge’- Taruwar Kohli recalls a story of teams fearing Vikram Rathour
Rathour was a top-tier batsman in India before becoming a coach. Rathour’s India career may not have taken off as he had hoped, but he was a formidable force on the home circuit. Taruwar Kohli, a former India U19 player, shared a story about how the opposing team’s bowler and coach hated bowling to Rathour, sometimes declaring loss before the match even began.
“As a player, I have heard about you that there was a time that the bowler and coach said, ‘We won’t play; match haar jayenge (we’ll lose the game). That’s how good you were on your day. I think it was a Bengal game. It was getting dark, and Himachal [Pradesh] were winning. You eventually won that game for your team so that is how good I have heard you were. I think Sachin paaji would be… in fact a lot of players. Sourav Ganguly was watching that game, so he saw the potential in you at that time. I have heard that you were a very good player against the short ball – playing pulls and hooks,” Kohli said on his show ‘Find a Way with Taruwar Kohli’.
Vikram Rathour was an excellent coach, although his tenure in India lasted less than a year. Despite his ability against the short ball, Rathour quickly realized that he was not cut out for the elite level, where Dravid, Ganguly, and Tendulkar excelled.
“It all boils down to the conditions. The ones we faced made you a player. Back in our days, and you’ll recall, a lot of the matches used to be played on mats. Turf wickets were far and few. Turf ones would have a lot of bounce and that automatically develops your game against short bowling. In formative years, playing on those wickets, you have no choice but to play squarer. So that worked that well. And as it is, when you play at the international level, you should know how to play against the short ball. My struggle was mostly against seam bowling because even though I played a lot in Ludhiana which had seaming tracks, I had some technical flaw which I didn’t know,” said Rathour.
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