Indian Catching-2:The recent past

Let's not go into the divine era featuring Solkar-Yajurvendra-Brijesh-Kirmani-Kapil-Sunny and just take a passing look at the Indian Test side of late 1990's. Even that generation of Indian cricket had two world class close-in fielders in Azharuddin and Dravid. Both were excellent at more than one position. They were good at forward short leg, silly point, short midwicket, covers and certainly at slip.

The two were ably supported by a young Sachin, often seen doing 1st slip duties those days. The team also had a naturally gifted keeper, Nayan Mongia. Mongia was as comfortable keeping to Kumble on Indian tracks as he was neat collecting Cronje's leg side nick to Srinath's fast rib-cager at Capetown 1997.

Sachin stopped fielding in slips after taking over captaincy in 1996 and spilling a few. He never returned to that position. Then came the stormy year of 2000 when Azhar and Mongia were discarded. These were quite some blows to the Indian catching department.

Dravid took over slip catching duties in the Tests and delivered the goods. [We shall come back to wicket keeping later in this series]. By this point of time Dravid automatically qualified as a top Test batsman and therefore took care of one catching position.

Laxman was another acceptable option for the second slip and short positions during his early years in international cricket. The Indian slip cordon looked like one happy family again in the early part of the current decade.

[next: The present]