India has been on a rise with the World cup triumph in 1983 as a catalyst for Indian cricket. India has seen the likes of great Kapil Dev, Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar and others, who have served the country and have been considered as one of the great that the game has ever seen. However India has also produced some of the most unluckiest cricketers, who despite their good run in domestic cricket, didn’t get to play for the Indian team. One such is former Mumbai batsman Amol Mazumdar.
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Mumbai is known to be one of the ‘batting powerhouses’ of India, it has continued producing some of the fine young batting talents. Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Rohit Sharma have been the find of Mumbai cricket. These all cricketers were amongst the runs that earned them a place in the Indian team, but that was not the case with Amol Mazumdar. He is one of the unfortunate player who didn’t get a chance to play for India despite of his excellent performance in domestic cricket scoring with an average of nearly 50.
Mazumdar was the highest run-getter for Mumbai till 2014. However, his former team-mate, Wasim Jaffer overtook him as the highest run scorer for Mumbai. Mazumdar has been the second highest run scorer in Ranji trophy history after Wasim Jaffer with 9202 runs.
When Kambli-Tendulkar got their names in history book by notching up a 664 runs partnership, playing for Shardashram school. Amol Mazumdar was the next batsman to bat. He remained padded up, but had to wait for a long time, perhaps what life told him at that stage itself may be, that he might have to spend his times waiting and waiting for his opportunity to arrive.
Dream debut
A young boy with short hairs took the field against Haryana in 1993-94 pre-quarter final of Ranji trophy. Amol Mazumdar delivered on a big stage for Mumbai by notching up 260 runs that put Mumbai in commanding position. He broke the record of highest run getter on first-class debut, which is still unbeaten.
Emergence of India’s big four depleted the career of Amol Mazumdar
He was at his peak at the time of Sachin, Laxman, Ganguly and Dravid which eventually gave no chance for his selection in the team. Mazumdar preferred batting at 3 or 4, a position that was allready taken by Sachin and Dravid. Lower middle order was still looking for a replacement, but the find was over as India got Yuvraj and Laxman at the start of 2001. He kept scoring runs in the domestic cricket, but still went unnoticed.
He later played for Assam from 2009-2011 and joined Andhra from 2012-2013, where his journey ended in domestic cricket.
The right hander has 11,167 first class runs at an average of 48.13 with 30 hundreds but that was not enough to earn him an India call. It will not be wrong to say him the most unluckiest cricketer ever. Despite of scoring heaps of runs in domestic cricket and ever consistent performance.
