Vikram Rathour is a current batting coach of the Indian Cricket Team and was a former profilic batsman who had a pretty short cricketing tenure of one year where he played 6 Tests and 7 ODIs. He was a right-handed opening batsman and was a classic run scorer at the first class level, scoring 11473 runs at an average of 49.66 in 146 matches. This included several fluent, stroke-filled centuries of the highest class.
He was especially known for his ability to play through the cover-region and rock onto the back foot to pull. Unfortunately, he found life difficult against the swinging ball in England in 1996 and Dominic Cork repeatedly induced him to edge it to the slip cordon. He couldn’t cement his place in the team owing to his inconsistency and put of form patches. He was a high potential batsman but failed to make it in the big stage.
Interestingly, Rathour was a consistent performer when he came up against a County side during that tour. Rathour soon faded away from the scene after not being able to impress during the tour of South Africa in 1996-97. He also played in a few ODIs, but with limited success. But one shouldn’t forget that Rathour amassed mountains of runs in First-Class cricket. Even after he was dropped from the team, he racked up more than 1,000 runs for two consecutive seasons in 1998-99 and 1999-00.
In August 2019, Rathore beat 14 other applicants who were interviewed for the post of India’s batting coach which included the likes of established names on coaching circuit like Mark Ramprakash and Pravin Amre as well as former England batsman Jonathon Trott. After several days of speculations Rathore replaced Sanjay Bangar who was elevated as assistant coach under Ravi Shastri’s tenure. Bangar had been a regular part of Ravi Shastri-led support staff and was there even when Shastri first joined as team director in 2014.
Rathore’s appointment also came under scanner with the conflict of interest charge against him since Rathore is a relative of Junior Chairman of selectors’ Ashish Kapoor. This particular charge against Rathore has been discussed in past BCCI meetings as well and he has been rejected from NCA coaching positions on more than one occasion under stringent conflict of interest rules.
After India was knocked out of the 2019 World Cup, this change of the batting coach was initiated with immediate effect. Vikram has been doing a stunning job since his appointment and we have seen it in the results, the team has been producing over time. In the recently concluded Australia series’ multiple players like Rishabh Pant and Ajinkya Rahane mentioned Vikram in their post match presentations and how he helped them improve their batting specially after the lockdown.
Ashwin recently scored a classic century against England and thanked Vikram in the post match presentation where he added that Vikram had really been serious with his batting since Australia and had constantly backed Ashwin, the batsman. With the current course of things, so many debutants who have come into the team have performed well with the bat and the onus of which should be given to Rathour, who has been constantly working really hard behind the scenes so that the results show on the field for India.
