New Delhi: Spectacular with the big gloves, quietly assured with the willow and yet happy to be in the shadows, Wriddhiman Saha, in his 40 Test matches for India, has certainly been more than the sum total of all his parts.
But having been out of India reckoning for over three years now, the 40-year-old has decided to call it quits from the game at the end of his team Bengal’s ongoing Ranji Trophy campaign. The announcement was made on his social media page late last night.
“After a cherished journey in cricket, this season will be my last. I am honoured to represent Bengal one final time, playing only in the Ranji Trophy before I retire,” Saha said.
“Let’s make this season one to remember,” he added in a post that went up late on Sunday night, typically unambiguous from the unassuming player.
He never had the aura of a Mahendra Singh Dhoni or the insane daredevilry of a talented Rishabh Pant but Saha, with his hands as safe as a house, was more than a mere hyphen between the two powerhouse performers of Indian cricket.
The 104 dismissals behind the stumps, including 92 catches in Tests, some of them absolutely splendid, Saha’s three centuries and six fifties aren’t always spoken about for their effectiveness. Neither the eight six-laden century in a losing cause for erstwhile Kings XI Punjab in the 2014 IPL final.
But Saha, for the better part of the 17 years since his Ranji debut in 2007, was happy to stay out of the spotlight.
Patience came easy to him as he had to wait nearly two years between his debut and second Test and nearly three years between his second and third Tests.
He was always that ever present understudy to Dhoni, knowing well that he will have to wait till the great man called time in whites.
Saha was an old fashioned Indian keeper like Syed Kirmani or Nayan Mongia — brilliant behind the stumps and a safe batter, who could be used as a floater in the middle order.
Whether keeping up to R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja on perennially under-prepared Indian tracks or gauging the wobbly seam movement of Ishant Sharma’s deliveries, between 2015 and 2018, Saha was undoubtedly one of the world’s best glovemen at work.
And one can say that with assurance despite his contemporaries being Matthew Wade, BJ Watling, Mushfiqur Rahim, and Jonny Bairstow.
There were moments behind the stumps that one simply cannot forget.
A flying catch to pouch South Africa’s Faf du Plessis off Ashwin’s delivery in front of silly point, which earned him the moniker of ‘Superman WriddhiMan’, was a moment of sheer brilliance.
His keeping was so exceptional that despite an IPL hundred, three Test tons and a brilliant Irani Cup double ton in a tricky chase, his batting never got the due it deserved.
And when Pant burst into the scene with his ‘X-factor’ batting, he was again confined to being the second keeper.
Once Gabba happened, the writing was on the wall for Saha and Rahul Dravid, the new coach, in a frank discussion during the tour of South Africa decided to show him the mirror that at 38, it makes no sense to be a second keeper behind a 20-something.
Having scored a fifty (vs New Zealand) in a preceding series and probably misunderstanding former BCCI president Sourav Ganguly’s generic encouragement as an assurance, his impregnable patient “defence” was breached as he fired some verbal salvos.
A spat with a Cricket Association of Bengal office-bearer saw him leave for Tripura for a couple of years before coming back home for a final hurrah.
His attitude towards life remained the same.
From the time he was a 16-year-old, who came from North Bengal’s Siliguri and stayed at a dingy PG in central Kolkata’s Koley Market area, to the time he became a known figure with a posh South Kolkata apartment and a luxury car, all he wanted to do was complete his tasks and answer only in mono-syllables.
Trust Virat Kohli to find that enduring.
“You particularly feel happy when a team-man like Saha does well. Such a nice person, never cribs about anything, does not have a bad word to say about anybody, ready to bat at Nos 8, 9, or 10,” the skipper had once said about his teammate.
