For a man who hardly spoke much – even his wife has said in the past that his inexpressiveness of sadness or joy is the only thing she would like to “cut marks for”, Wriddhiman Saha has caused a storm in the wake of his non-selection for Sri Lanka Tests. Befittingly, with as few words as possible by merely restating facts about who said what to him – from Chetan Sharma to Sourav Ganguly to Rahul Dravid, and above all, by tweeting a text message from a journalist that told its own story. Never before in his career has he been discussed as much by the public; now he is part of memes and Gifs to nail down what’s wrong with the system. Who would have thought Saha, the quiet unobtrusive man who shuffled behind the stumps with impressive stealthiness, would become the poster boy to bring down a few egos.
The start, though, couldn’t have been more sudden. Rohit Sharma tripped during warm-up before the start of the 2010 Nagpur Test and had to wait for his Test debut for nearly four more years. The man over whose foot Rohit had tripped, Saha, found himself facing a red-hot Dale Steyn in the unlikeliest of circumstances: a second-choice back-up wicketkeeper making his Test debut as a specialist batsman at No. 7, because there were no actual specialist batsmen left in the squad to choose from. He left his third ball; it reversed in late to crash into the off stump.
The then 25-year old Saha had learned what would become the defining lesson of his career the hard way: the need to be ever-ready, irrespective of circumstances. He had been thrown in at the deep end, without any warning at all, when all he had been ready for was a poolside view. Ever since, he has always prepared for a game assuming he would be in the playing XI. Even though he has spent a large chunk of his career on the bench.
He waited for Deep Dasgupta during his early days for Bengal. He waited for MS Dhoni during his prime years for India. And then, even as the then captain Virat Kohli called him the best wicketkeeper in the world, he waited for home Tests and pink-ball Tests because Rishabh Pant had first dibs elsewhere. Stoic is an understatement for almost an entire career spent in readiness knowing the norm was that you weren’t required. It is perhaps apt to call it a state of Wriddhiness.
