A chance encounter with Kambli

I was checking in at the Mumbai airport recently when I saw a familiar face at the neighbouring counter. At first I thought I recognised him, but I wasn't so sure since no one else was. He quietly checked in and started walking towards the security check when I mustered the courage to walk up to the man and talk to him. As it happened, my eyes weren't deceiving me. It was indeed Vinod Kambli. The man with two double-centuries and a Test average of over 50, the man who played his last Test at the tender age of 23 was standing right before my eyes!

He was delighted hear me recount that match in Sharjah eons ago when he took Shane Warne to the cleaners and still more so when I asked him for his autograph. It was in many ways a poignant moment. Here was a man no one around seemed to know or recognise (or perhaps care to acknowledge) and yet, this very same person could have been one of the all-time greats.

There was a time when he was bracketed along with Sachin Tendulkar as one of the most promising young players in world cricket. For the pre-teen boy that I was back then, the flamboyant and self-assured Kambli was far more attractive to watch than the more sober Tendulkar. Today, nearly two decades later, Sachin Tendulkar is widely acknowledged as one of the all-time greats.

Vinod Kambli is a name that is no more than a footnote- the Archie Jackson to Tendulkar's Bradman. Kambli was a man with extraordinary talent who never quite made it big - India's very own Hick, except he was dropped at 23 and never again given a shot at redemption. As many people of my age would concur, life in reality turned out to be an awful lot different from what we imagined it to be in our teenage years/early 20s. I met at the Mumbai airport that day, the very embodiment of that harsh reality.