When a general of great talent and courage was recommended to him, Napoleon (or so the story goes), would always ask, "Yes, but is he lucky?"
It is a question that could also be asked of cricketers. The history of Indian cricket is littered with players whose careers have been defined by extraordinarily bad luck, so that their opportunities and overall record have been blighted by disappointment and underperformance. Unlucky players are those whose manifest ability has simply not been matched by recognition and reward. Every country has them - think of New Zealand's Rodney Redmond, who hit a century on Test debut and was never picked again - but the Indian experience, as befits a nation conscious of the influences of the planets and other forces beyond an individual's control, accommodates all known varieties of ill luck.
The most obvious kind of bad luck is the accident of birth at the wrong time. Think of the spinners Padmakar Shivalkar and VV Kumar, who had the great misfortune of being contemporaries of the immortal Indian spin quartet of the 1960s - Bedi, Chandrasekhar, Prasanna and Venkataraghavan, perhaps four of the greatest spinners in the world at the time. Shivalkar and Kumar were arguably just as good as, and quite conceivably better than, many of those who donned Indian colours before and after their time, but the tragedy of chronology meant that they hardly got a look in for their country.
Kumar actually played two Tests, nearly bowling India to victory on his debut against Pakistan in 1960-61 with figures of 5 for 64 and 2 for 68. Injured and wicketless in his second outing, he was never picked again, Chandrasekhar taking the legspinner's slot in the side. Skilled at line-and-length bowling accompanied by prodigious turn, Kumar finished at 599 first-class wickets (his bad luck again depriving him of that final wicket) at 19.98.
The tyranny of the calendar also put paid to the career of the brilliant wicketkeeper batsman AAS Asif. When the all-conquering touring Indian Schoolboys side of 1967 swept their English opponents aside that summer, it was Asif and not his team-mate Syed Kirmani who was the first-choice keeper. A swashbuckling bat in the Budhi Kunderan mould, Asif would have been a natural for one-day cricket had he been born just 10 years later. Stifled in Ranji cricket, he disappeared from the scene after just 13 first-class matches, his Hyderabad place taken by the diligent but less talented P Krishnamurthy, and he never came within sniffing distance of the India cap his friend Kirmani would wear with such distinction in the decade to follow.
The accident of birth had nothing to do with Sadanand Viswanath's ill luck. He was rightly the first wicketkeeper tried out in succession to the redoubtable Kirmani, and demonstrably the most talented of the seven who would play for India in that role in the following decade. In only his third Test, against Sri Lanka, he equalled the Indian Test record of six victims in a Test. Astonishingly he was never picked again. It was said that his batting was not up to the mark, but a wicketkeeper who ended his first-class career with 179 victims in just 74 games (and accompanied them with a century and 23 fifties as well) was hardly undeserving of a more extended run.
The ill luck of selectoral caprice has dogged many an Indian cricketer, so Viswanath is hardly alone. Batsmen of the class of Vijay Bhonsle and KP Bhaskar never got picked for India despite first-class records far more impressive than many who were so favoured. The Kanitkars, fa
Source: https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/22451454/luckless-cricketers