The Best Player Not To Play For India, Hindustan Times

This winter India play thirteen Test matches at home. The last time they played so many was back in 1979-80, when two in three Indians now alive were unborn.

This (to me) welcome superabundance of Test cricket has sparked many conversations about what, the popularity of T20 notwithstanding, remains the highest and most satisfying form of the game. In one such conversation, a cricket fan in his thirties asked me; ‘Who was the best cricketer never to play for India?’ He himself thought it must...