This post is being written with contributions from 4 of the 5 members of the 2007 WVUCC think tank. Over the past few posts, Sohail has evaluated all of his teammates, and now, it is our turn to return the favour...
Sohail Chaudhry
Right Hand Batsman/Bowler/Wicket-keeper (Captain)
Here is the first of 4 profiles:
by
Arvind Thiruvengadam.
First Impression About Sohail: Prior to the start of 2005 season for WVUCC (my first), I heard a lot about the team and, in particular, about Sohail from WVUCC veterans. Interacting with him on the day of the first practice session, I was truly amazed by this character. It’s not often one gets to see that your team-mate is truly to international standards in the game, and I realized that fairly quickly with Sohail. The one thing that amazed me most was his ability to accurately judge the capability of a person. This is a very important characteristic that a captain should possess (especially one who is captaining a team in which everyone claims that he can bowl as well as bat!). The fact that Sohail is technically so strong on all aspects of the game makes it easy for him to figure out the weakness and strength of every player. And when I say every player, it includes himself. Not many of us realize the mistakes we make as a player, but Sohail is quick to notice his own mistakes, as well as those of his team-mates.
Favourite Innings: There are two innings of Sohail which are my favourite:
1) The first is the
innings he played against PittsPunters in 2006, during which there was an opening wicket partnership of 150 runs, of which Sohail hit 91. This was a truly amazing batting performance by Sohail. It was a treat for me to stand on the other end and watch him rip apart the PittsPunters bowling attack. He was not only playing this great innings, but as it was my first game as an opener for WVUCC, I was receiving batting coaching from my captain throughout the entire 18 overs that I played! Thanks a lot to Sohail for that moment. It gave me great confidence as an opener after that game.
2) The second is the
semifinals game against Hurricanes in 2007. While most of us find it impossible to bat without drinking water, Sohail played this innings of 82 not out off just 39 deliveries, in an important semi-final game, while fasting for Ramzan. As far as I am concerned that’s truly remarkable. That performance (in the game) was an excellent display of his strong mental abilities, coupled with his brilliant batting skills.
Favourite Shot: Front foot drive, with his bat blade tilted, towards backward point, which often results in a towering six over that region. Teams that have studied him well often place good catchers in that position, hoping to get him out there with a mistimed drive. But it happens only when he is in very, very, extremely bad batting form, which again is very, very, extremely rare.
Here is the second of 4 profiles:
by
Abishek Muralidharan.
There are numerous wonderful things I’ve admired and envied in him not only as a cricketer but also as a human being. Seeing him play I used to wonder why on earth such a talented player, in his mid-twenties, was playing club cricket in a remote corner of the world instead of performing national duties. I learnt that circumstances can play games too with people’s lives.
Sohail the cricketer
When you look at him bat it becomes obvious that he’s someone who’s worked very hard on his game in his formative years. He has a very classical and methodical approach to batting. So much so that he was particular about being informed well in advance about his position in the batting order so that he could do his mental preparation. All the ingredients for perfect batsmanship can been seen in this man, starting from having a still head, watching the ball all the way to the release, to playing it late. Added to these he also is a wonderful timer of the ball, often sending balls that disappear into the trees surrounding the little Edgebrook Field effortlessly.
He has a very pronounced backlift wherein his bat goes perpendicular to the ground and then comes down as a rapid swish transferring good amount of power to the ball. This process, coupled with his timing, ensured the balls had enough momentum to race across the turf. Though high backlifts aren’t unusual the uniqueness that I saw in his backlift was that he achieved it with only his wrists and not with his entire arm which I thought gave him good balance and control while playing the ball. The shots that I saw him play most productively were the open bladed effortless slices over backward point for six. He was able to play this shot perfectly because he played the ball so late. He would open his blade at the last moment and give it an upward slice. In the first half of the 2007 season he was dismissed cheaply a couple of times. Probably it could be the swing that some bowlers achieved had caused him some discomfort. His leg-side play was also very good. Sometimes he chose to play the paddle to fine leg rather than the conventional approach of playing it square. He mentioned that for some reason he thought this shot had eaten up his flick. However, he did flick the ball on other times without falling over or losing balance. The paddle, I guess, was just a great batsman having some fun when he no longer felt challenged by the opposition. To sum it up, his batting had class written all over it and was such a treat to watch.
I’ve always been a strong believer in the fact that the most important thing to be a successful batsman is temperament, even above physical strength. Physical strength without mental strength will not help a batsman sustain at the crease. In Sohail’s case his mental strength was on par with his physical strength. His mind would never waver and he would calmly build his innings with singles and twos and not just boundaries. I don’t think I’ve seen him get a rush of blood leading to a rash stroke. He would go about his batting in a very structured fashion that it would resemble a skilled worker performing his daily duties in an organized manner without any fuss whatsoever. His mental calmness was also reflected in his captaincy. He never panicked and always emphasized enjoying the game more than anything else. He marshaled his resources very well and at the same time ensured that everyone got to exhibit their skill and did not feel left out.
As a bowler he was very accurate and controlled and never tried to do anything fancy. He was a thinking and smart bowler often setting up batsmen and dismissing them with perfection. For example I loved the way he would bowl a couple of quick balls outside the off-stump to frustrate the batsman and then slip in a slower one on the stumps inducing a rush of blood in the batsmen enticing him into a false stroke.
As a wicket-keeper, again, he was top class. It is said that you gauge a wicket-keeper by how much he doesn’t get noticed during a match and that’s exactly what he did. He hardly drew attention while keeping wickets because he rarely failed to gather the ball or drop a catch. People were astonished to see him keep up to the wickets for bowlers like Karthik Venkatasubramanian and even Hari Menon once. However my take was that this was just a testimony to the caliber of this cricketer. In international cricket there is hardly any fuss to keep up to the wickets for the seamers and it is considered normal and that’s where I believe Sohail belongs.
He was a very good fielder too, always attacking the ball, moving swiftly, running hard while chasing balls, and made catching look like a wonderful thing to do on the field.
Overall he is a complete cricketer fully equipped for top level cricket but has been pushed into oblivion by the dark forces of fate and destiny.
Sohail the person
As a person he is one of the most disciplined, modest, calm, and gentle person I’ve seen. Never once have I seen him get angry or lose his mind. Even when he wasn’t pleased with something he put it across in such a manner that the other person was not hurt in any way. The quality that I most admired in him was his patience and calmness. He never complained about the numerous duties he handled and did not use it as an excuse when he failed to deliver. The willpower in him was amazing. This was evident when during Ramadan he hardly had any strength in him due to the continuous fasting but still he summoned the last joule of energy in his body to drive to the games and perform without complaining. He always shied away when praised for his efforts and never talked about his performances or what he had done. I haven’t seen an iota of ego in him given his stature as a player and he never once hesitated to praise another individual’s efforts. In all he’s a wonderful human being. I’ve looked up to him and tried to change certain things in myself.
Other opinions
A very spiritual person who is extremely learned about other religious doctrines. You can speak to him about the Quran, Bhagavat Gita, as well as the Bible. I was very happy to see the feedback report about his team players, and wondered how keenly he has gauged every person on the field. I was very fortunate to have played with him and to know him as a great friend.
Here is the third of 4 profiles:
by
Ashok Varadarajan.
First Impression of Sohail: During the summer of 2002, I happened to hear about cricket being played in WVU at the club level. That season, I was a happy bench warmer waiting to see someone score big or get tired while fielding because of nice hot and humid weather, so that I could get a chance to run onto the field. That year there were more than 11 players who would have been in any team's line up, hands down - Usman Omar, who was similar to Afridi as he could smash the ball all around the field; Usman Hashmi who was a left-arm fast bowler; Nandakishore Jalumuri, in typical VVS Laxman-style - when the opposition got tougher he got more tougher; Abishek Anjanappa, who could drop anchors at will; Sikkil Kaarthick, who as far as I know, was the fastest spinner ever to play for WVUCC; Karthik Mahadevan (leggie) who came with me and (I later realized) who adored Warne and copied all his tricks; Jayendran Srinivasan (Jayanth) who was always thinking about McGrath when he bowled; Venkatesh Parthasarathy, who was a good keeper, but never got the ball as the batsman in the opposition liked to hit it before it reached him; Michael Julius, who I am sure if you had seen field then you would have been surprised how quick Rhodes must really be; Santhosh Balla, who did everything in his own style, including talking to the opposition. Compared to all of them, one guy stood out – Sohail Chaudhry. He was tall but quiet, looked like a beast but was soft, and no one could ignore him on the field because of his merits as a pure cricketer.
I had heard that he was from Pakistan and instantly got scared because of his size. So I did not talk to him much and tried to avoid him all the time. After some net sessions, I realized that the impressions I had about this giant were nothing but wrong. During that time he wasn’t the team’s wicket keeper but when the keeper came to bat during practice, he just donned the keeper's role and did it to perfection. When the practice went into a lighter mood, he would try spin bowling apart from his regular pace bowling. Initially, we had a rule that if you got out twice in practice, you were done with batting and one guy I really hated to see batting was Sohail because getting him out once was hard enough, twice was almost impossible at times.
Favourite innings: It’s always easy to remember the matches which we won and most of the wins must have come with Sohail's contribution. One instance can show how good a team player he is. WVUCC needed something 218 to win and we were at 217 for no loss. Prasheel Chaganti had already scored the first century ever for WVUCC at that point and Sohail was on 96. We were all thinking that it was possible for Sohail to score a century. Prasheel didn't take a run off the last ball of an over so that Sohail could try for a boundary to get to a century. Sohail’s reply was, "Don’t worry about the century, we need to win" and insisted on taking just a safe single. Sohail ended up at 97 not out. That innings was the best innings I have seen him play, based on the class he showed (and by Prasheel, too), as most of the boundaries were all on the ground and timing of the ball was picture perfect.
Favourite shot: Not many would have thought about playing this shot in the international arena, till the T20 games. The favorite shots are always are the ones which others generally cannot do. When you watch videos that teach you how to pull a ball, they always insist that the head should be positioned inside the line of the ball, as you may get hit if you miss the ball. However, Sohail had a unique way of playing it, an upside-down paddle shot over the keeper which is something not too many pro's will even think of trying.
Sohail Chaudhry is a selfless competitor, true sportsman, and a team player. Simply put – “Sohail is a man who has more facets than a disco ball.”
Here is the fourth of 4 profiles:
by
C.S. Manish.
First impression: In the summer of 2001, WVUCC had a formidable team with Sanjay Palakamshetty at the helm. Towards the latter half of the season, we heard about a student who would be coming to WVU from Pakistan. I clearly remember the first time Sohail came to practice. He was easily one of the bigger guys on the team (size-wise) but he did not say a single word, preferring to stand on the sidelines, awaiting his turn to show his skills. In those days, our practice field was on a baseball diamond that has since been converted into a parking lot for the WVU Recreational Center. Bala Balakrishnan, the manager-coach at that time, asked him to keep wickets and we immediately knew that we had found a good player. The first thing that struck us was the time he seemed to have to collect the ball. Breaking tradition, the think tank decided to play him in that weekend’s game itself as a wicket-keeper batting lower down the order. In the 7 years since then, Sohail has not missed a single game for WVUCC.
Role in the team: At the second practice, Sohail batted for the first time and I went from being the wicket-keeper/opening batsman to being the #11 batsman in the side in just two weeks! And I did not care one bit. Sohail was and is vastly superior to me in both regards and it was a pleasure just to be able to watch him from close quarters. We did have a really good batting partnership against OSU that season but, overall, Sohail never really clicked into the gear we were hoping he would. In hindsight, I would put it down to culture shock. He was an 18-year old boy, all alone in a foreign nation, trying to fit in. In the 2002 season, Usman Hashmi was named the captain and, in spite of having a good team, we fared badly. The only shining light were the performances of Sanjay and Sohail. When the 2003 season began, Bala and I had a decision to make about appointing a captain for the team. We discussed all the candidates we had and had absolutely no hesitation in wanting Sohail, still the youngest fellow on the team, to be the leader. Sohail was close to tears when we offered it to him and he humbly promised us that he would not let us down. Over the course of the next 5 years he has been true to his words. For years after that, Bala and I talked numerous times about that decision and consider it to be one of the best ones we ever took.
At the start of the 2003 season, we had a dearth of bowlers. Sohail approached me to take up keeping once again, while he began bowling. All his life he had just been a wicket-keeper batsman, but he had no problems shifting into being a bowling all-rounder. That year, he took the Midwest Cricket League (MCL) by storm with some inspirational batting and bowling, including the first hat-trick by a WVU player (see below for details). For his efforts he was rewarded with the Most Valuable Player award for the MCL in 2003. His fourth year, 2004, saw him go from strength to strength. During that season we had, arguably, the strongest batting line-up ever for a WVUCC team – Sohail, Prasheel Chaganti, Nandakishore Jalumuri, Usman Omar, Kaustubh Deshpande, and Tafazzul Khan – but the lynchpin was still Sohail, who still managed to consistently outshine all the others. Fittingly, he was named the Most Valuable Player of the entire league for the second year in a row.
At the MCL All-Star game that year, two former West Indian players,
Larry Gomes and
Faoud Bacchus, were invited to participate in the proceedings by playing for the All-Star teams. Sohail captained one of the sides that went on to win the festivities, with Bacchus and Gomes observing carefully while playing second fiddle to him. Sohail led the charge with an exhilarating 79 from 29 balls in the second match (after not batting at all in the first as he wanted all the other All-Stars to get some batting at his expense!). At the awards dinner that night, Gomes and Bacchus were asked to give their evaluation of the talent in the league. Gomes was polite and mentioned about 5 or 6 names. Bacchus, after asking us if we wanted an honest opinion, said that he saw a few okay players but just one with the talent to do well at the very highest level. No prizes for guessing who he named. What was special to us was that he addressed Sohail the whole time as “my cap’n”. During the game Sohail was constantly talking to Faoud and Larry about the strategies a captain adopts on the field and he regaled us on the 4 hour-drive back home with all the tips that Bacchus and Gomes had given him, tips that he has used numerous times in the years since then.
When Sohail became the only member of the famed line-up to return the following season, we knew the 2005 season would be a long one. In an agonizingly long season, where we lost 7 out of 8 games, the stress of driving to Cleveland and Columbus began to take its toll. The best thing that came out of that season was that we decided to look around for a league closer to home and found the Pittsburgh Cricket Association (PCA). The final season in the MCL was not a total loss as by the end of the campaign, Sohail became the first batsman in the history of the MCL to cross 1000 runs, and later on was the first bowler to cross the 50 wicket mark, too. In fact, two seasons have come and gone, but Sohail is still in
the MCL's Top 10 all-time run-scorers list.
In 2006, Sohail took over a fairly new-look WVUCC squad into the PCA league that began to gel towards the latter half of the season. It took some time for Sohail to adjust his playing style to fit the new league, but once he hit his groove, he took his new opponents by storm. By the end of the season, Sohail was once again named the MVP of the regular season (called the Champion Player in the PCA) but a semi-final loss to the PittsPunters stung him very deeply. It is one of the few times in my association with him I can recall Sohail being unhappy with some of the members of the opposing squad.
Which brings us to 2007, and the rest, as they say, is history. Oh, by the way, at the PCA awards dinner, Sohail was named the Champion Player of the league one more time (the 4th time he has been the league MVP in the last 5 seasons, and, that too, across two different leagues).
Technical analysis: a) Wicket-keeping
At WVU, I have been fortunate to see two outstanding keepers – Sohail and Hari Prashanth. As a wicket-keeper I have rarely seen Sohail dive for the ball, while HP almost brought about situations that required a spectacular (but safe) dive. At around 6’1” Sohail is unusually tall for a keeper but he compensates for this with impeccable sideways movement that enables him get to balls while his hands are still low enough to the ground to help keep his balance. At times I have felt that he could have dived for a ball but maybe the ball seemed closer than it was because of his quickness in getting to its vicinity. Where Sohail is exceptional is when he stands up to the wicket. Time after time, I have seen Sohail stand up to the wicket from the first ball of the match. In terms of sheer speed of reflexes, I must say Hari Prashanth, who now plays for Cuyahoga Cricket Club, was superior but overall Sohail was better to the fast bowlers, while HP was spectacular to the spinners. In the PCA league, Sohail only kept wickets occasionally, when he saw an opposing batsman standing outside the crease. Sanjeev Singh was the victim of two spectacular leg-side stumpings off our opening bowlers and just hates it when Sohail dons the gloves.
Technical analysis: b) Bowling
Sohail began bowling serendipitously at practice one day, and was so good at controlling the swinging new ball that it became the second string in his bow at the expense of wicket-keeping. He has a long run-up that gathers momentum at it nears the wicket. He does not have much of a jump (except when he suddenly starts to imitate Imran Khan) and has a prominently chest-on action. He is not a big swinger of the ball. In fact, if anything, I have hardly seen him swing the ball. What he does have is incredible control over the length. He is not metronomic, in that he does not bowl the same line and length to all batsmen. Instead, he adjusts it depending upon the state of the game. During the end overs he bowls yorkers almost exclusively. In the last couple of years he unveiled a slower ball, which is actually quite easy to pick up, and has been smashed around the park. Maybe he ought to try bowling it with a split finger grip to be able to hide it better from the batsmen. Uniquely, his actions and run-ups change every year and can be traced back to which bowler he saw the most of during the off-season on the television/internet. He is best, however, when he imitates Waqar Younis’s style.
One year in the MCL, we were playing Cleveland 2 and they were romping along at 161 for 5. Sohail was in the Waqar phase of his bowling action and proceeded to take 5 wickets in 6 balls, all bowled by yorkers, including a hat-trick, to end the Cleveland innings! To top it, he then remained not out to win us the match when we chased down the target (more on that innings later).
One last thing about his bowling; one day at practice he was trying to show one of our left-arm spinners how to position his body at the wicket and proceeded to bowl a few overs of controlled left-arm spin, too! I have often asked him to try it out in a match as a variation, but he has resisted my suggestion to date. Maybe this year he will try it out once, just for the heck of it.
Technical analysis: b) Batting
As a batsman, he is not someone you will pay a significant amount to watch. That is, he is not aesthetically pleasing (Abishek, Raj Gopal, and Nandu in the off-side, are the ones you’d probably put some money for) but he is extremely effective. What he lacks in style, he makes up for with unmatched hand-eye coordination. When he is preparing for the bowler he prefers to look at the crease until the bowler is almost at the delivery stride. Many times I have seen umpires stop the bowler because they feel Sohail is not ready. It is actually a little unnerving bowling to him because of this. From his wicket-keeping background, he has developed the skill of watching the ball out of the bowler’s hand. At times, early on in his innings, Sohail plays the ball before it is bowled, meaning that he predetermines what he wants to do by anticipating what the bwler might bowl. This is when he is most vulnerable. Good swing bowling can get to him as he tends to overplay the swing, often inner-edging the ball onto the stumps. If you can draw him forward with the new ball, while making it swing in or out (Sanjeev Singh and Amit Raina are the two bowlers who can do this on a consistent basis in the PCA), you can get him out at the wicket (caught behind, LBW, or bowled). You will NOT get him out on the backfoot, unless the ball keeps really low and scoots through (a distinct possibility at Edgebrook Field).
When he is in good batting form, Sohail gets at least a single off every ball, at the bare minimum. Ironically, if you see him hit a lot of boundaries at the start of an innings, it means that he is struggling with something. At such times it is not uncommon to see him caught at the boundary, as he tries to hit his way out of the discomfort he is experiencing in his batting. When I opened the batting with him, his constant instruction to me would be to take the bulk of the strike and play out the swinging ball, shielding him from it. While I think that he was just trying to make me feel comfortable and not worry about about batting so slowly, I also think that it was influenced a little bit by his one weakness as a batsman.
There are so many Sohail innings I could write about, but I want to focus on two in particular. In the afore-mentioned game against Cleveland 2, we were chasing 162 to win and the opposing team figured that stopping Sohail from scoring boundaries would do the job. From the first ball, they spread the field and kept at least 5 fielders on the boundary, and waited for his patience to wear out. When it finally did, and Sohail got his first boundary, he had already scored 80 runs. He did not need to add a single run to that total – he had taken the liberty of attacking the boundary because we needed just 4 runs to win! This ability of his to take what the opposing team gives him sets him apart from the rest of the batsman in the PCA. The book on Sohail is not to stop the boundaries at the start of the innings; incredibly the best way to get him out is to force him to hit over the fielders!
The second innings I want to talk about took place in 2006. WVUCC cleaned up the Lumberjacks for just 81 runs in that game. The LJ’s correctly assumed that their best hope of winning the match was to take wickets. Fat chance! The first ball was carved over cover for a 6 and Sohail’s
most brutal innings was on its way. In 19 balls, he hit 4 fours, and 7 sixes, reaching 69 not out from a total of 82 for no loss in just 5.3 overs. The 13th ball he faced was the only dot ball of his innings, and that itself was stopped just inside the cover boundary. By then his personal score was at 52!
Mental analysis:
Having played a lot of cricket, and at various skill levels, he has a very good understanding of strategies and is good at gauging the oppositions strategies. At the same time, he has a pragmatic approach and does not take too many risks if they are not warranted. Sohail once told me about an incident that took place in 2006, when we were playing the defending champions,
Strikers, and had gone into the match with just 9 players. In the 20th over, we needed 12 runs to win and if we achieved it in that over we would get two bonus points. Sohail was informed of this by his teamamtes but preferred to settle for the win. He defended the first two balls bowled by Sanjeev Singh. The third ball was an attempted yorker that went down the leg-side and he instinctively flicked it over square-leg for a six. Before Sanjeev bowled the next ball, Sohail told me that he guessed what was to come. Since Sanjeev had just been flicked over square-leg, Sohail adjusted his stance, stood outside the leg-stump and did not shuffle across. As expected, the next ball was full but ouside the off-stump. A swish of the blade later the ball had cleared the cover boundary and the win had been achieved, with a bonus point to boot! And oh, by the way, Sohail was unbeaten on 104, meaning he had gone from 92 to 104 and did not even know his score.
In fact, whenever he batted he insisted that he not be told his individual score, and did not care much to "celebrate" the passing of the team's milestones (50, 100, 150, etc.). So much so that, in a trait that was unique to WVUCC in the PCA, we were the only team that never jumped up and down when the score passed those milestones. For the past few years, no batsmen has even been aware of his personal score until after the innings is done. Sohail always put the team ahead of the individual and all of us gladly followed suit.
Sohail’s inner calmness helps him stay above the water in situations where others would panic. In fact, he stresses more over his teammates’ failures than he does his own. He went through a prolonged batting slump in the middle of the 2007 season but it did not show in his attitude or demeanor. The one knock against him has been that, at times, he is willing to forego his success in order to see his teammates do better. In 2007 he batted down the order so that his teammates could get the best of the playing conditions, sacrificing his stats in the process. In the 7+ years I have known him, I have not heard him swear, I have never seen him admonish a teammate, and barring two incidents, I have never seen him angry. It is a testament that both times that I saw him get angry, he was upset at the treatment that a teammate had received and not at something that directly affected him.
What else:
Familial responsibilities cut short what had been a promising cricketing career in Pakistan, but he never brings it up as an excuse or explanation, and if he feels sad about it, he does not show it to us. He is quite shy and shirks individual publicity of any kind. He is quick with a word of praise for his teammates and, in all my years of association with him, has never ever referred even once to some feat of his on the playing field, unless repeatedly asked to talk about it. All the stories that involve Sohail, some legendary but all of them true, have been spread by us. If no record had been kept of his achievements, you would never have known how good a player he is simply from talking to him about it.
For the WVUCC think tank, it has been really easy having him at the helm. All we had to do was select a team and relax. He took care of the rest. Some men command respect by their actions, some men command respect with their words, but very few men command respect in both ways. Sohail is one of them. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to play alongside him and, more importantly, be considered by him as a friend.
In the team huddle at the start the 2007 final against the SteelZags (see below), he said, “I don’t care if we win or lose today. I only care that we go out there with a positive attitude from start to finish. If you can do that, the win will take care of itself.” We played hard in that game and I can safely say that all of us wanted to win the tournament mainly to give Sohail the richly deserved chance to lift the trophy. The rest was just icing on the cake.
This year he sets out again into Pittsburgh, with another refurbished side, trying to defend our title. We wish him all the best!!
Marks out of ten this season (
10/10)
What is wrong with this map? Actually, nothing!! We are so used to seeing maps with the conventional North-South projection that it is surprising to realize that maps are just a visialization of the earth and there is no right or wrong way to do it. 
My blog has been on a hiatus for a long time. Now, I can move on and resume normal blogging. Thank you for your patience!
