Robin Uthappa

As a batsman Robin Uthappa has always been attractive to watch, hard-hitting, with every shot in the book, and unafraid to hit the ball in the air. However, tempering his strokeplay has been his biggest problem, and has kept him out of the Indian team for long periods.

Robust in build, Uthappa first caught the eye when he made a brilliant 66 in a losing cause for India B against India A in the Challenger Trophy in Mumbai in 2005 against an attack that included Zaheer Khan, Murali Kartik and RP Singh. In the subsequent edition of the same tournament, in Mohali in 2006, he cracked a match-winning 93-ball 100 for India B against an India A team. The reward was a place in the Indian team - in place of Virender Sehwag - in the final ODI against England early in 2006, and he capitalised with a well-paced 86 at Indore. After a spell out of the team Uthappa got a chance in the sixth ODI against England at The Oval. A nerveless unbeaten 47 off only 33 balls helped India seal a rousing win.

Uthappa was a part of the Indian squad which won the World T20 in 2007, but thereafter he had a poor year in international cricket in 2008, scoring only 179 runs in 11 ODI innings. That resulted in him being dropped from the Indian team, after which Uthappa had a few fairly ordinary years in domestic cricket. In 2013-14, though, he had a superb domestic season in which Karnataka completed a rare treble - winning the Ranji Trophy, Irani Cup and Vijay Hazare Trophy. Uthappa followed that up with an outstanding IPL in 2014, in which he scored 40 or more in ten successive innings and was the leading run-scoring of the tournament. The reward was a place in the Indian team for the tour to Bangladesh for the ODI series in 2014, where he made one fifty in a series of rain-interrupted matches.

He was left out again, but showed his appetite for runs was intact as he led the run charts in the 2014-15 Ranji Trophy season as Karnataka became the first domestic team to repeat their title-winning treble again. Uthappa made another India comeback during the limited-overs tour of Zimbabwe in July-August 2015, but with modest returns.
ESPNcricinfo staff