Budhi Kunderan
Encyclopedia
Budhisagar Krishnappa Kunderan (2 October 1939 in Mulky, near Mangalore
Mangalore
Mangalore is the chief port city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It is located about west of the state capital, Bangalore. Mangalore lies between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghat mountain ranges, and is the administrative headquarters of the Dakshina Kannada district in south western...

 in Karnataka
Karnataka
Karnataka , the land of the Kannadigas, is a state in South West India. It was created on 1 November 1956, with the passing of the States Reorganisation Act and this day is annually celebrated as Karnataka Rajyotsava...

 – 23 June 2006 in Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

) was an Indian
Indian cricket team
The Indian cricket team is the national cricket team of India. Governed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India , it is a full member of the International Cricket Council with Test and One Day International status....

 cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

er. He played as a wicket keeper for the most of his career, and was an exciting but unorthodox right-handed batsman.

Budhi Kunderan made his first appearance in first class cricket for the Cricket Club of India against the touring West Indies
West Indian cricket team
The West Indian cricket team, also known colloquially as the West Indies or the Windies, is a multi-national cricket team representing a sporting confederation of 15 mainly English-speaking Caribbean countries, British dependencies and non-British dependencies.From the mid 1970s to the early 1990s,...

 in 1958-59. After just two first class matches, he was picked to play Test cricket for India against Australia
Australian cricket team
The Australian cricket team is the national cricket team of Australia. It is the joint oldest team in Test cricket, having played in the first Test match in 1877...

 in the next year. Through the fifties India had wicket keepers of about the same quality in Naren Tamhane
Naren Tamhane
Narendra Shankar Tamhane was an Indian cricketer who played in twenty one Tests from 1955 to 1960.He was a wicketkeeper batsman....

, Probir Sen
Probir Sen
Probir Kumar 'Khokhan' Sen was an Indian cricketer who represented his country in 14 Tests from 1948 to 1952....

 and Nana Joshi
Nana Joshi
Padmanabh Govind "Nana" Joshi was a cricket player who kept wicket for India in Test cricket.Joshi was born in Baroda, Gujarat, India in 1926. He first gained attention as a cricket player when he scored 100 notout for Central Province Governor's XI against the touring Commonwealth XI in addition...

. Joshi and Tamhane had already been tried when Kunderan got his chance in the third Test. Kunderan got out hit wicket
Hit wicket
Hit wicket is a method of dismissal in the sport of cricket. This method of dismissal is governed by Law 35 of the laws of cricket. The striker is out "hit wicket" if, after the bowler has entered his delivery stride and while the ball is in play, his wicket is put down by his bat or his person...

 on his first appearance while attempting to pull Ian Meckiff
Ian Meckiff
Ian Meckiff is a former cricketer who represented Australia in 18 Tests between 1957 and 1963...

 but scored 71 and 33 in his next Test.

Kunderan had already played three Test matches when he made his Ranji Trophy
Ranji Trophy
The Ranji Trophy is a domestic first-class cricket championship played in India between different city and state sides, equivalent to the County Championship in England and the Sheffield Shield in Australia...

 debut in 1960. In his first Ranji appearance, he hit 205 for Railways against Jammu and Kashmir.http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/23/23950.html His second first class hundred was also scored later in the year against the same opponents in a remarkable match that Railways won without losing a wicket. http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/24/24486.html

From the early sixties, Kunderan had a new competitor for the wicket keeping position in Farokh Engineer
Farokh Engineer
Farokh Maneksha Engineer is a former Indian cricketer of Parsi background who played 46 Tests for India and played first-class cricket for Mumbai in India and Lancashire in England. Engineer's active international career started in 1961 and continued to 1975, and he was India's first-choice...

. Both played in the series against England at home and toured West Indies in 1961-62. Engineer was selected ahead of Kunderan when England again visited India in 1963-64, but he was found medically unfit on the eve of the first Test at Madras
Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Chennai
The Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium is a Chennai stadium and seats 40,000. It hosts football , and athletic competitions. The complex also houses a multi purpose indoor stadium with a seating capacity of 8000 which hosts volleyball, basket ball, table tennis etc. The stadium is named after Jawaharlal...

. Opening the innings, Kunderan hit 192 with 31 fours, 170 of which came on the first day of the match. He scored another hundred at Delhi
Feroz Shah Kotla
The Feroz Shah Kotla or Kotla was originally a fortress built by Sultan Ferozshah Tughlaq to house his version of Delhi city called Ferozabad. A pristine polished sandstone pillar from the 3rd century B.C...

 and finished with an aggregate of 525 runs in the series.

The Indian selectors dropped both Kunderan and Engineer from the next series against Australia and instead went for K. S. Indrajitsinhji
Kumar Indrajitsinhji
Kumar Shri Indrajitsinhji Madhavsinhji was an Indian cricketer who played in four Tests from 1964 to 1969 as a wicketkeeper-batsman....

. Engineer was then recalled for the New Zealand
New Zealand cricket team
The New Zealand cricket team, nicknamed the Black Caps, are the national cricket team representing New Zealand. They played their first in 1930 against England in Christchurch, New Zealand, becoming the fifth country to play Test cricket. It took the team until 1955–56 to win a Test, against the...

 series that followed while Kunderan played as an opening batsman in the place of injured Dilip Sardesai
Dilip Sardesai
Dilip Narayan Sardesai was a former Indian Test cricketer. He was the only Goan-born cricketer to play for India, and was often regarded as India's best batsman against spin bowling.-Early career:...

.

In 1965, Kunderan left his job in the Railways and appeared for Mysore
Karnataka cricket team
Karnataka cricket team is a cricket team that represents the Indian state of Karnataka in domestic first class cricket. One of the strongest teams in the Ranji Trophy Elite Group, it has produced many of the Indian cricket team's leading players throughout its existence...

 and the South Zone. A side effect of this was that he was able to keep wickets to the bowling of Chandrasekhar
Bhagwat Chandrasekhar
Bhagwat Subramanya Chandrasekhar is a former Indian cricketer who specialised in leg spin. Considered amongst the top echelon of leg-spinners, Chandrasekhar along with E.A.S. Prasanna, Bishen Singh Bedi and Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan constituted the Indian spin quartet that dominated...

, Prasanna and Venkatraghavan in domestic matches. Recalled against West Indies
West Indian cricket team
The West Indian cricket team, also known colloquially as the West Indies or the Windies, is a multi-national cricket team representing a sporting confederation of 15 mainly English-speaking Caribbean countries, British dependencies and non-British dependencies.From the mid 1970s to the early 1990s,...

 in 1966-67, Kunderan scored 79 in 92 minutes in the Bombay
Brabourne Stadium
The Brabourne Stadium is a cricket ground in the Indian city of Mumbai. It is located on 90,000 square yards of reclaimed land along Marine Drive near Churchgate railway station in South Mumbai. The stadium is owned by the Cricket Club of India . Brabourne Stadium is India's first permanent...

 Test. Early on in the innings, he appeared to have been caught by Garry Sobers but as the batsman prepared to depart, Sobers indicated that he had taken the catch on the bounce. One Test later, Kunderan again found himself out of the team.

The team that toured England in 1967 included both Kunderan and Engineer, but from here Engineer asserted himself as the primary 'keeper. Kunderan played purely as a batsman in the second and third Tests of the series. When Sardesai retired with a hand injury in the Lord's Test, he opened with Engineer and topscored with 47 out of India's 110 allout. He opened both batting and bowling at Birmingham
Edgbaston Cricket Ground
Edgbaston Cricket Ground, also known as the County Ground or Edgbaston Stadium, is a cricket ground in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham, England...

 where India played four spinners
Indian spin quartet
The Indian spin quartet is the collective name given to the Indian spin bowlers of the 1960s and 70s: Erapalli Prasanna and Srinivas Venkataraghavan , Bhagwat Chandrasekhar , and Bishen Singh Bedi . Between them, they played 231 Test matches taking 853 wickets...

. This was to be Kunderan's last Test.

He served as a professional in the Lancashire league and then with Drumpellier in the Western Union in Scotland. In the early 1980s, he played for Scotland in the Benson and Hedges Cup in England. Kunderan lived in Scotland from the turn of the 1970s. His brother Bharat, also a wicket-keeper, played first class cricket for Indian Universities in 1970-71.

Budhi Kunderan died from lung cancer at the age of 66.

External links

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