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A feature by Karthik Narayan

“A wicket keeper’s job is never done”. That is a quip that may be quoted any time in the history of cricket. While all the praises are showered upon the star batsmen, the super fast bowlers and the electric fielders, the show lights rarely do shine on these small people who do great and yet silent deeds. Nayan Ramlal Mongia is no stranger to that pack.

Born on Dec 19, 1969 at Vadodara (Baroda now), this quiet young man, made it to the Baroda team in the 1989-90 season after striking a rich haul in the India U-19s in the 1987-88 season. He had done really well with the bat and behind the stumps; in just 5 games, he impressed the Baroda selectors with 17 victims as keeper and had scored 305 runs.

The Madhavrao Scindia Cricket Ground at Rajkot is where it all started for Mongia, when he made his Ranji debut against Saurashtra in November 1989. He did not have a great role to play except take his first catch off the medium pacer Palkar. He walked in to bat at Number Eight, and spent very little time making a duck. He did open the second innings for Baroda, but did not have much to do as well.

He did have his glory, since jumping the First Class bandwagon on November 18, 1989. In his very first season itself, he had 15 victims along with 315 runs in 6 games which included a superb hundred and a fifty. In his second season, he went on to Tour England and had a decent series there in alien conditions. His next season was one of his richest harvests – in just 5 games he made 2 centuries with a galloping average of 79, thus making in all 555 runs! The flurry of catches and stumpings and the runs that he scored always made him Baroda’s blue eyed keeper.

Kiran More, the wicket-keeper of the Indian team in the early Nineties, had just retired from the game and the National Selectors were looking for a good replacement. Mongia’s pyrotechnics with the bat and some lithe catches and stumpings from behind for Baroda earned him a well-deserved place in the National Team. His test debut came for India in 1993-94 against Sri Lanka at Lucknow and his ODI debut against the same team at Rajkot followed almost immediately.

A wicketkeeper is always taken for granted in any team. If a batsman fails – they call it as lack of form. The bowlers fail and they call it as an off-day at the office. But when these gloved men make a mistake, it is highlighted so much and forms part of Front Page Cricket.

Even while playing for India, in between doing National Duty, he did represent the Baroda team every now and then scoring the odd century and amassing runs even while going about his duties as wicketkeeper. One has to commend Mongia for doing sterling work as wicket keeper for all the teams that he played for. He was a specialist in an area not really taken up by many. Wicket keeping is an art by itself, requiring lots of patience, tremendous amount of confidence and agility behind the stumps along with the commitment and effort required. Wicket keeping involves a lot of hard work and this Baroda player has done his part always. He is ever enthusiastic behind the stumps and one may hear him always cheering his teammates and who can forget that “aigo” once in a while.

If anyone deserves to be applauded for keeping against the bowling of Kumble and the other Indian Spinners, on the Indian tracks with uneven bounce, it has to be this wicket keeper. He has had to wear helmets while keeping, something unheard of in other parts of the world during his time!

Mongia’s finest moments in First Class Cricket came when he scored his highest score in a game against Orissa in April 2001 at Vadodara. Coming in at number 3, he showed patience and the skills to play a marathon innings 181 off 452 balls, something that depicted his temperament and extreme maturity. He helped Baroda make a mammoth score in that game which was the Semi Final of Ranji 2001. That was a great innings at a very crucial juncture. His fifty in the second innings was again a great knock. In 150 odd First Class Games, Mongia has over 7500 runs with 12 centuries and 45 half centuries at an average of 38 plus, which is really very good for a wicketkeeper batsman! He is nearing that landmark of 400 victims as wicketkeeper, which is really stupendous for this hard-worker.

Nayan Mongia was sadly the greatest victim possibly of the Indian Selectors! He was knocked out of the Indian Team and it was a shame what the selectors did to him when India toured Australia. He was treated like a tourist, and not played in any of the games. He was totally ill treated and that was very poor handling of one of the Nation’s best keepers to date!

Ever since he was ousted from the National Team, he has been performing even better. With the Baroda Bombers, Zaheer Khan and Irfan Pathan donning national colors, it became rather rough for the Baroda team. But Mongia has never ceased to resist the opposition advances with his tough hard grinding cricket;

We at Cricketfundas.com egg him on to scale more peaks and hit no more bottoms in his illustrative career and also wish him all the best to become the greatest keeper ever from the Indian Soil.

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