Imran.
| Photo Credit: FILE PHOTO

It was 25 years ago that Mark Butcher scored a monumental 173 not out in England’s successful chase against Australia in the Headingley Test. He scored seven other Test hundreds, some of them against the most fearsome attacks. He is now a popular commentator and sharp analyst of the game. Excerpts from Butcher’s exclusive interview with The Hindu at Lord’s:

Your comparison of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi with Garry Sobers earlier this year got a lot of attention. It was fascinating, how you proved, through the help of visuals, the similarities in the bat swing, hand speed…

I watched him make that 175 [off 80 balls] in the Under-19 World Cup final [against England at Harare]. I was struck by that incredible, long, high backlift, the huge follow-through, the complete circle almost where the bat finishes around, tapping him on the spine. You know, Sobers used to hit a lot of shots with his feet together. He would play full balls almost off the back foot. And Sooryavanshi can hit them like that too.

Even if his career ends up not reaching the expectations that other people have, which I think is very unlikely, he has still in the IPL done something that all of the greatest players up until now have never, ever done: none of them have managed to score at a strike-rate of 230, hit that many sixes, be that consistent in the entirety of the IPL. It is still one of the most remarkable things I have ever seen.

Today’s youngsters are exposed to T20 from the beginning, whereas when I was very young, it was Test matches. They grow up thinking about batting very much in a hyper aggressive mode. These younger guys can do things at their age that we wouldn’t have dreamt of at ours.

ALSO READ | Garry Sobers: cricket’s greatest — a legacy beyond numbers

Yes, even Sachin Tendulkar didn’t hit as many sixes, for all his genius. Sooryavanshi is a product of the T20 era of cricket.

Correct. So he will have to learn the game the other way around. He will have to learn how to bat time, to defend. In our generation, it was the opposite. We would have to spend a lot of time learning how to hit the ball.

How do you recall your masterpiece — 173 not out in 2001?

My main memory is about that summer, really. I wasn’t expecting to play Test cricket again. I got an opportunity and I played 42 Tests in a row. I had completely changed my game.

Your father helped, didn’t he?

That is right. The biggest thing I remember is the relationship I had with my dad in the winter of 2001. I called him and said, ‘Dad, I am hating playing cricket.’ Something that I had always loved. Now I was hating it. And I said to him — ‘Treat me as though I have never played the game before.’ So we went right back to the beginning. He really taught me how to hold the bat, how to stand, the whole thing. We changed my grip. We changed my stance. We changed my backlift. Everything. We went back to zero. Like I was five years old. And we worked like that for about three months. And then I luckily got back into the team. I had made a few runs playing for Surrey. A few injuries in the England camp before the Ashes started, and I got in.

How much does that knock, which came against Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne, Brett Lee and Jason Gillespie, mean to you?

Ah, it was huge. You wouldn’t be talking to me if it hadn’t been for that. And I wouldn’t be working in TV either. So that innings changed everything. It was the greatest day.

And how was the coach’s reaction?

I know my dad was in tears when [BBC] Test Match Special called him up.

The players you like to watch these days?

I actually love watching K.L. Rahul. I think he is a sensational player. Really classy. Harry Brook is fabulous to watch when he is in. Joe Root, too. And Travis Head — you can’t take your eyes off the screen when he is batting.

You have played against some of the greatest bowlers in history. Who were the most challenging among them?

Blimey! Curtly Ambrose. Him and Courtney Walsh. And then you had, obviously, Shane Warne. Glenn McGrath. Murali [Muttiah Muralitharan].

Among the Indians?

Harbhajan [Singh] and [Anil] Kumble, on those tracks.

And the batters you admired?

[Brian] Lara was sort of the king around about those times. Fellow left-hander, so I greatly admired him. Then the guys like [Ricky] Ponting, Sachin [Tendulkar], obviously. I remember applauding Ricky from second slip at the WACA, much to the annoyance of Nasser Hussain, who was standing next to me at slip. He glared at me. I was just standing there going, ‘Oh man, that’s good’. There were a lot of great players around, like the South Africans, Jacques Kallis and Graeme Smith.

Is there cause for concern about the future of Test cricket?

Yeah, of course, there is. What you would like is to have eight to ten teams who are competing on a level playing field. If only England, Australia and India are playing each other, the game is starting to eat itself, you know.

Eventually, one of the great things about all of the series that go around is that you are anticipating and you are excited about the idea about playing this team at this venue. But if it is the same three teams the whole time, it is not that exciting.

What has happened in the modern era is that the gap between the countries that have plenty of finances and the rest has got wider. The competition has perhaps thinned out a little bit in recent times. And that is a huge shame, that finances have meant that a lot of countries, the West Indies, being the most obvious example simply because of their dominance [in the past], have suffered.

South Africa are kind of hanging in there. They are still producing a lot of players and they still manage just about to keep enough of their most talented players to play Tests. But in places like Sri Lanka and the West Indies, they find it very difficult to keep their best players who disappear off to earn more money playing T20. And that is a problem for the world game.

The First Class game and the structures that produce Test Match cricketers are strong in some places and not very strong at all in others.

Your thoughts on Bazball?

I have been critical of it at times. In the game of cricket, the Test match is the game. And they tried to do something that was going to take the game to a different place. But Test match cricket kind of fought against it a little bit. Because when it came down to it, in the big games against the likes of India and Australia, it didn’t work. And so, Test match cricket is kind of greater than any idea that people might have around how you play it.

And Test cricket is the greatest form of sport.

It is. The sport itself dictates to you what is necessary. And if you push too hard, the game will bite you back. And that is what happened. There is as much pleasure to be taken from a really hard-fought draw sometimes as there is from smashing it all over the park.

ALSO READ | Cricket World Cup – Will expansion lead to elevation?

The women got to play a Test at Lord’s, finally.

This has come about because the world has decided, well, you know, this is a great game of cricket, right? Why would we want to stop 50% of the world’s population from enjoying and playing the sport that we think is a great sport? And so that opportunity is now there and what you are seeing is a product of that.

Players in the women’s game that you enjoy watching?

I like Smriti Mandhana’s batting. She is just an incredibly graceful player. So easy on the eye. Very, very lovely to watch. She plays pace and spin equally well. She reminds me of David Gower, in fact. Harmanpreet Kaur is very good to watch, too. And Jemimah Rodrigues is a fine technician.

Besides cricket, music is your other passion. And you had the opportunity of performing with Sarah Brightman, one of the greatest voices of our time.

It was good fun, singing some of Sarah’s favourite songs on live television. It was kind of nerve-racking, but it was good.

Isa Guha.
| Photo Credit: P.K. Ajith Kumar

“If it’s a batting-friendly pitch, I become a batter. If it’s a bowler-friendly pitch, I become a bowler. It is simple.”

When Ravindra Jadeja was asked to shed light on his sustained all-round excellence during India’s second Test against West Indies in New Delhi last month, a throwaway response that evoked chuckles from the press pack was all that came by. It seems to be intrinsic to his nature to not harp on his skills, preferring instead to let his runs, wickets and catches do the talking.

Uncommon flexibility

Even then, the light-hearted reply begs the question: how many actually have the ability with both bat and ball to switch their primary skill based on the vagaries of the 22-yard strip?

On a track conducive to run-making, he is perfectly capable of batting in the top six and peeling off a century. And on a spin-friendly surface, he is equally adept at weaving a web and producing a five-wicket haul. Add his sharp ground fielding and safe catching to the mix, along with his athleticism, endurance and explosive burst of speed, and he clearly belongs to an exotic breed even within the category of all-rounders.

The wide-ranging attributes have helped him scale exemplary numbers in Tests: 3,990 runs, 338 wickets and 49 catches in 87 matches. As and when he crosses the 4,000-run mark, he will join a select gathering of all-rounders — Kapil Dev, Ian Botham and Daniel Vettori — to have scored these many runs and claimed 300-plus scalps in the classical format. With a two-Test series against South Africa beginning November 14 in Kolkata, the landmark is imminent.

Yet, as eye-catching as these figures are, it seems reductive to view the 36-year-old’s career purely through the prism of numbers. For as long as he has been around — his Test career will complete 13 years in December — he has been defined by his proclivity to seamlessly slot into different boxes, like water taking the shape of its container, rather than by any conscious pursuit of personal milestones.

“I won’t lie that I don’t think of personal milestones at all. It seems like it will feel good when such things happen. But once it happens, it feels the same as earlier. There is nothing new,” Jadeja explained in the press conference in October. “More than my own milestones… if I perform, does it make the team win? Are my runs and wickets having an impact on the team? Right now, my mindset has become like that. That’s more important. If you score runs and take wickets and the team loses, it has no relevance.”

That Jadeja, famously dubbed ‘rockstar’ in the infancy of his career by Shane Warne, has reached this sweet spot is a reflection of the maturity he has gained over time. Though his slim, supple frame continues to glide across the turf like it did in the reckless rush of youth, having not gained a visible shred of fat in all these years, he is now the oldest member of the Indian team.

In a year that has witnessed the retirements of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma from Tests — his old spin partner R. Ashwin also exited the stage last December — the all-rounder from Jamnagar, set to turn 37 on December 6, is remarkably enjoying his most prolific period with the bat. In eight Tests in 2025, he has scored 659 runs — more than in any other year — at an average of 82.37.

Putting it together

Akin to the ripening of a fruit, Jadeja took time to fuse all the ingredients as a batter at the highest level. Though the raw material was always there — three triple tons in First Class cricket by the time he turned out in Test whites — it was only towards the latter part of 2016, more than three years after making his debut, that Jadeja began to pull his weight with the willow. His batting has scaled up substantially since 2018, producing 2,814 runs in 52 Tests at an average of 44.66. All of his six Test hundreds have come in this period.

He was at his apogee in England this year. In a largely parched summer that facilitated a spree of runs, Jadeja duly filled his boots with 516 runs in 10 innings at 86. It included a streak of four successive half-centuries and was followed by a ton that contributed to India saving the Test in Manchester on the final day. A simple technique, devoid of exaggerated trigger movements, and a steely temperament were the driving forces in this purple patch.

The tour of the Old Blighty, however, wasn’t rewarding with the ball for Jadeja for obvious reasons. There are limitations that the left-arm spinner has as a wicket-taker outside the subcontinent, but even when the conditions are inimical, what he always offers is control from one end as the pacers probe from the other.

Numbers are instructive in this regard. Since January 2010, among bowlers with 200-plus Test wickets, Jadeja’s economy-rate of 2.59 runs per over is the lowest. In an era of rising run-rates, it is a testament to Jadeja’s accuracy in hitting a good length that he is still able to tie batters down. It makes him deadly on turning tracks at home where the benefit of natural variation becomes all the more pronounced, for even the bowler doesn’t always know whether the ball is going to grip and spin or skid into the pads after pitching.

The modus operandi has yielded majestic results, his 338 scalps in the format being the fifth-highest by an Indian behind Anil Kumble, Ashwin, Kapil and Harbhajan Singh.

In the broad spectrum of skills he brings to the table, there is also his contribution to India’s white-ball teams. His last act in T20Is before retiring along with Rohit and Kohli was lifting the T20 World Cup in the Caribbean last year. In ODIs, he hasn’t played since winning the Champions Trophy in March.

Strangely, despite his illustrious career, Jadeja hasn’t necessarily got his due from the public at large. Even when he was left out of India’s ODI squad for the recent series against Australia, although chief selector Ajit Agarkar stated that it had no bearing on the medium-term, it was no more than a footnote.

Legacy vs. popular memory

It is perhaps because, notwithstanding all the runs, wickets and catches in numerous victories for India, he isn’t associated with a singular defining moment of glory that lives on in popular memory. While he won Chennai Super Kings its fifth IPL title in 2023 by hitting a six and four off the last two deliveries in a cliffhanger, he has had some ‘so near and yet so far’ heartbreaks on national duty. The 2019 World Cup semifinal against New Zealand and the Lord’s Test this year spring to mind.

But in the grand scheme of things, this shouldn’t matter. Because whenever Jadeja hangs up his boots and reflects on whether his runs and wickets had an impact on the Indian team, the answer will be a resounding yes.

Published – November 08, 2025 12:15 am IST

V.V.S. Laxman pulls to the boundary on his way to a record 281 during the Second Test match against Australia played at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata in March 2001
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

Cricketers, like all athletes, have defining performances. The one that above all others reveals the essential style, the uniqueness, the essential person. These are often made in adverse conditions, against the run of play. Often they cause a captain to tell his dressing room, as Don Bradman did during an innings by Stan McCabe: “Come and watch this, you’ll never see the likes of it again.”

You can imagine skipper Sourav Ganguly saying something similar while V.V.S. Laxman was compiling 281 in Kolkata as India beat Australia after following on.

Not all defining innings led to victories. Sunil Gavaskar’s 221 at the Oval left the match drawn, while Sachin Tendulkar’s 136 in Chennai against Pakistan couldn’t prevent defeat. Was that Tendulkar’s best innings, or should that title go to his 143 against Australia in Sharjah, the so-called Desert storm in a One-Day International? Perhaps it was the 114 he made on a bouncy Perth track as a 19-year-old?

Not all such innings are centuries either. Gundappa Vishwanath’s unbeaten 97 in the Chennai Test against the West Indies was more Vishy-like than even his double century against England.

It is not always remembered that India won Laxman’s Test thanks as much to Harbhajan Singh’s 13 wickets including India’s first hat-trick. That must rate as the off-spinner’s defining performance — just as Anil Kumble’s 10 for 74 in Delhi in the second innings against Pakistan will remain his.

Defining performance

Although Kapil Dev once took nine wickets in a Test innings, his defining performance may be the unbeaten 175 he made against Zimbabwe in the 1983 World Cup? My favourite, however, was his 129 in Port Elizabeth on India’s first tour of South Africa where he seemed to be playing at a different level from everybody else. The next highest score was 17.

The Kolkata Test also saw the quintessential Rahul Dravid — calm, supportive, classical — as he made 180 in a partnership with Laxman. Dependable, as a current commercial featuring him has it. There was a brief ‘Indiranagar ka goonda’ in one of his early Tests, at the Wanderers where he made 148 after showing fast bowler Allan Donald who was boss!

The statistician Anantha Narayanan wrote in a study recently that he calculates Ravichandran Ashwin will finish with 656 Test wickets, more than any other Indian. Ashwin reinvents himself regularly, and his defining performance will probably come closer to the end when he has mastered all his variations and worked out his tricks.

I once wrote — my only excuse being I was young and raw — that Sunil Gavaskar’s batting, like history, repeats itself. It was a silly thing to say, and I was taken to task by the sports editor. No two innings by any batter is exactly alike, and part of a reporter’s job is to train himself to notice the differences.

Variety and surprise are keys to mastery

If Gavaskar hit a straight drive off every ball that was pitched up to him, or Virat Kohli played that unique on-drive suggestive of a tennis player’s cross-court shot, cricket would be so much poorer. Variety and surprise are keys to mastery.

Every player is capable of one moment of greatness in a career, but the best players have many of them, and closer together.

After he had made 192 in Auckland where he dominated the New Zealand bowlers, Mohammad Azharuddin was asked which was his favourite stroke. “The one that goes exactly where I want it to,” he answered. Virender Sehwag would agree.

His 195 at Melbourne where he perished attempting the six that would get him to his double, was probably that batter’s defining innings. He shook the bowling by the scruff of the neck, hit 25 fours and five sixes and was out hitting a full toss to long on. He was a stranger to caution.

In his first Test as captain, Virat Kohli made two centuries, the second of which nearly took India to victory. In the end they fell short by 48 runs, but Kohli’s aggressive approach as batter and captain captured the cricket world’s imagination. Especially since it all began with a knock on the helmet from a Mitchell Johnson express.

Will someone else have the same list? Unlikely. And that’s part of the joy of sport.