Five successful Indian cricketers in county cricket

Just a couple of days ago, discarded Indian opener Gautam Gambhir was signed by Essex for the remainder of their season.

With the Indian team scheduled to tour South Africa in a few months, the left-hander will be keen to re-work certain aspects of his game and score some runs in the process in order to come back into the reckoning.

This isn’t the first time that an Indian cricketer has chosen to ply his trade in English county cricket. The timeless legends Sunil Gavaskar, Mohammad Azharuddin, Dilip Vengsarkar, Kapil Dev, Bishan Singh Bedi and the late Tiger Pataudi – all of them perfected their batting skills on the seaming, swinging, bouncy pitches or polished their guiles with the red cherry.

With the advent of Twenty20 cricket, however, basic cricketing sense seems to have disappeared from the minds of the new generation of players.

India, unfortunately, bore the brunt of this illogical attitude on their 2011 tour to England and Australia.

A spell in county cricket not only helps you to refine your core strengths, but also gives you the much-needed break away from the rigours of international cricket.

More often than not, it is this stint that helps one become a better all-round cricketer.

Murali Kartik, after being left out of the national side for a long period, is a regular player for Surrey, while Harbhajan Singh seems to be back at his nagging best after turning out for Essex.

Here are some of those players who benefited from spending quality time in county cricket:

5. Mohammad Azharuddin (Derbyshire)

The former Indian captain also enjoyed a short stint with English county side Derbyshire in the early nineties. Known for his graceful, fluid batting style, Azhar, like many other illustrious batsmen before him, chose to ply his trade in England during the off-season.

In his own inimitable style, the wristy Hyderabadi hit a magnificent 205 against Durham, an innings characterized by several of his trademark flicks and immaculate footwork against the spinners.

England player David Graveney, whose left-arm spin troubled the rest of the Derbyshire batsmen, came in for severe punishment by the Indian batsman.

Although Derbyshire lost the game, Azhar’s innings stood out for its sheer grace and effortless placement of the ball into the gaps.

He left the county in rather acrimonious circumstances. The duration of his stay also provided him some insights into his own game, and he shone on subsequent tours to both England and South Africa – in fact, it was his experience of playing on seaming tracks in England that enabled him to be among the few performers in the Cape Town Test against South Africa in 1997.