Sandeep Patil

Sandeep Madhusudan Patil was a jack of all trades who played cricket for India between 1980 and 1986. Apart from being simply a hard-hitting lower order batsman, he was handy medium pacer who bowled off the wrong foot and attained much success in the international circuit on the back of some fantastic performances for the country.

Patil was considered for the Indian team after a couple of swashbuckling performances for his Ranji team, Mumbai and for the West Zone team against visitors Australia and Pakistan in 1980. He was selected for the national team consequently for the last two Test matches against Pakistan. But just a week prior to making his international debut, the hard-hitter scored his career best Ranji innings for Mumbai against Saurashtra at the Wankhede Stadium, smashing 210 runs in just 205 balls. The highlight of the innings was when he teed off and sent a ball flying out of the stadium which is not an easy task at this venue.

He made his ODI debut towards the end of 1980 against Australia and bagged the Man of the Match award for a brilliant 64. In the first innings of the first Test against the same opposition, Patil had reached 65 when he was hit on the right ear by a Pascoe bouncer and collapsed on the pitch suffering a concussion. He was forced to bat in the second innings to avoid an innings defeat. He came back very strong in the second Test when he smashed a sparkling 174 in the Adelaide Test which was the highest score by an Indian in Australia at the time. Another interesting feat included hitting six boundaries in an over against England.

He was one of the heroes of the 1983 World Cup triumph and got India across the finish line with some good performances. Though aggressive, his batting lacked a bit of consistency and discipline. As a result, he was dropped from the Test team and never played the longer version again. He did however, play ODI cricket. He retired in 1986 but came back in 1988 to captain the Madhya Pradesh Ranji side with a lot of success. He had a short stint as a coach of the Indian national team and also coached the India 'A' team . Following this, became the coach of the Kenyan national side and took them all the way to the semi finals of the 2003 ICC Cricket World Cup.