Manoj Tiwary swears never to score a hundred again.

Manoj Tiwary scored a one-day hundred in the last match he played for India. He was retired hurt that day. Since then he’s been hurt match after match, overlooked for players who are the future of India.

Tiwary’s last match was on December 11^th in some other year. He top scored, was man of the match, retired hurt – how much must a man do to play another game?

Since that Chepauk game India have travelled – from Melbourne to Perth to Adelaide to Brisbane to Sydney to Hobart to India to Dhaka, for some reason, Tiwary too has travelled with them.

India have played 11 ODIs from 5^th Feb to 18^th March, rotated three seniors, not made either finals, piggybacked on one batsman, but not found a slot for Tiwary.

Tiwary has possibly seen more action on twitter. His tweets have been sane, restrained, considerate, informed. He’s been accurate with his travel co-ordinates.

What else can Tiwary do?  A lesser man would have cracked. Is that what is expected of players who are not part of India’s Future Star Program?

So when Tiwary gets another game he just doesn’t care – or still worse, he cares too much. Put yourself in Tiwary’s place – you haven’t seen a game for months, and then they throw a morsel your way and expect you to feast on it.

Deep down you know, they don’t want you, they want that other guy who will score 99 100s to break the record – He said so himself.

And yeah, Tiwary was born on Children’s Day. How else do you treat him?


Also see: A case for an Indian cricketer who's not Raina or Rohit