The moment in the sun is here for Hanuma Vihari

"In Melbourne (in 2018), when Ravi (Shastri) told him that you might have to open, he put his hand up and said, 'no problem. I will play'," Sridhar recalls. ©Getty
Visakhapatnam 2019. It was a time when a fair bit of churn was happening in Indian cricket.

This was a time when, like now, a spot in the Indian eleven was at a premium. This was also the time when Hanuma Vihari walked up to the then fielding coach R Sridhar and blurted that he should have been dropped.

It was the first of the three Test matches against South Africa - also India's first home game of the 2019-21 Test Championship and the occasion was ripe for new ideas. India had pulled a rabbit out of the hat by bumping Rohit Sharma to the top of the order and bringing Wriddhiman Saha back from the cold, but things didn't stop there. India were also tinkering with their ploy of fielding an extra batter at the time, which aligned the stars for Vihari to play his first Test match on home soil.

India have played 25 Tests since then, including 10 at home, but Vihari is yet to add to his Test caps in India - enigmatically on the same kind of pitches he'd average 60 in first-class cricket and knocked on selection doors. Somehow, he's been pigeonholed as more of an overseas expert whose defensive game is well suited to the moving ball. It means he misses more games than he plays.

That's not to suggest that the trying wait has left Vihari disappointed and bitter. Far from it, in fact, and nobody perhaps can vouch for it with more credibility than Sridhar, India's ex fielding coach who also coached Vihari since his early days at Hyderabad's St Johns Cricket Academy. It was, in effect, Sridhar who had admitted Vihari to the academy on the basis of one on-drive he saw in the nets during trials - a shot that would go on to become a trademark.

"During that Vizag Test, I remember he came to me and said 'Sir, I should not have played this Test'," Sridhar tells Cricbuzz. "Hanuma had played that Test because he had got a hundred in the previous Test in Jamaica. In India, we play with certain combinations... We still won that Test match on Day 5 but it took the class of Shami to get us there and took so much out of him."

Vihari wasn't done making his point to Sridhar just yet. "He said, 'Sir, next Test I shouldn't play. We should play with an extra bowler because the way we are batting, we don't need six batters'. Rohit was on fire in that series, Mayank was batting brilliantly at that time and it was also his first Test in India. Hanuma knew that the captain of the team would always keep the team ahead of him. He understands."

And the management listened to Vihari, picking Umesh Yadav over him on another typically flat pitch in Pune. While the honesty didn't do Vihari any favours, it ensured that India went on to win the next Test far more comfortably by an innings, not just pocketing the series in the process but also establishing a fixed playing combination in home conditions, something that wouldn't be easily swayed by the triumphs abroad.

No wonder Sridhar holds his pupil in high regard. "Hanuma is a terrific reader of the game. Tactically, he's one of the best I have seen, he has such a good sense of the game. Even with the Indian team, when he was in the reserves, he used to come up with very good tactical inputs.

"In Melbourne (in 2018), when Ravi (Shastri) told him that you might have to open, he put his hand up and said, 'no problem. I will play'. He understands the game, knows what the team requires and I haven't seen him get flustered by not getting his opportunities to play.

"We had nicknamed him 'Sena Vihari' because he plays only in SENA countries." Sridhar has a good laugh as he says that.

For an "absolute introvert" that Vihari is, Sridhar finds himself in the select group of people he opens up to and is willing to seek unsolicited feedback from. "Despite his heroic effort in the Sydney Test, I wasn't happy with him," Sridhar reminisces. "I had an honest conversation with him at the end of the game. 'Why should you get injured? You should have been fitter!' I remember telling him. He needed to get his priorities right and understand the importance of fitness. He accepted the fact, and that's what a good student of the game does. He was much better when he came back against South Africa; his fitness had improved so much."

Vihari and Ashwin put up a wall of defiance against Australia to eke out a draw in Sydney last year
Vihari and Ashwin put up a wall of defiance against Australia to eke out a draw in Sydney last year ©Getty
Like Sridhar, another person in Hanuma's tight circle, and who could perhaps admonish him like that, is John Manoj. He is also a coach at St Johns Cricket Academy and had mentored Hanuma in his early school cricket before handing him over to Sridhar at the Under-13 level. Manoj, too, doesn't remember Vihari ever getting disappointed at continuously being out of favour in home Tests... except on one occasion.

"The only disappointment I remember was the (recent) series against New Zealand," Manoj says. "I was actually more disappointed than him that he was not picked. Then he was sent to South Africa to play for the 'A' team. That's what was happening with him. It was always about being told that 'wait for your turn, time will come' but it didn't seem to come."

Even for a soft-spoken, self-aware guy, you could see why Hanuma could have been disappointed by that snub. Shortly after his epic in Sydney, when he was fit and available, he had been through six Tests in England, including the World Test Championship final, and spent all of it carrying drinks. To add to it, the selectors had now picked Shreyas Iyer over him for the two home Tests against New Zealand.

So where did he fit in the scheme of things? It helped matters little that soon after he was dropped, he was hurriedly added to the India 'A' squad that was set to travel to South Africa. Word was that Vihari was much better off playing the unofficial 'A' Tests in South Africa and preparing for the three-Test series that was to follow, instead of warming the bench at home.

Shortly after this selection foul-up, Vihari had put out a cryptic tweet.

Hanuma vihariHanuma vihari
@HanumavihariFollow,
18 Nov 2021

That comma could have been Vihari's concealed response to the snub; a comma after all is a pause, not the end. Or it could be something completely unrelated. The real matter at hand was why had Vihari suddenly fallen out of favour, both home and away.

But it seemed that he would finally get his opportunities in South Africa. Everything pointed to that, including the failures of India's middle-order in England and the pressing need for change. It was intriguing then that Vihari played just the one Test in South Africa. It came in Johannesburg, when Virat Kohli was tending to a back spasm and Shreyas Iyer was laid low with a stomach bug, but as one would expect, that lone appearance wasn't without impact. Vihari's 40 not out in the second innings helped India scramble to setting a target of 240, a total the Indian bowlers could at least work with, but head coach Rahul Dravid wasn't ready to tinker with India's established but crumbling middle-order just yet.

"Senior players have also had to wait for their time and score a lot of runs at the start of their careers... They (Iyer and Vihari) have just got to take heart from the fact that whenever they are getting opportunities, they are doing well and hopefully their time would come," Dravid had said ahead of the deciding Test in Cape Town. India went on to lose that too.

But come this series against Sri Lanka, the selection dilemmas have come and gone. With Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane dropped on the basis of poor returns, the middle order finally has the scope and the heart to accommodate Vihari, the man who didn't think twice before agreeing to open in front of a packed Boxing Day crowd. It was only his third Test and the move was fraught with danger for a career so young.

In his short 13-Test career spread over three and a half years (India have played 35 Tests since his debut), Vihari has also batted at No. 5, 6, 7 - basically everywhere he was asked to, copped blows at short leg, and even rooted for himself to be dropped so that his team could breathe easy. Surely, now is when he gets his moment in the sun?

Even with Pujara and Rahane out, Vihari will have tough competition for the middle-order spots
Even with Pujara and Rahane out, Vihari will have tough competition for the middle-order spots ©BCCI
Of course, there are challengers. Vihari will be competing with Shreyas Iyer and Shubman Gill for the two vacant spots in the middle order.

"I would ideally like to see him bat at 3 in Test match cricket. He's an ideal fit for that position, he's cut out for that," Sridhar believes. "He's got the temperament of Pujara and has a slightly better technique. He can handle spin very well too."

Until his time comes, Vihari can only work with what he's got and hope that people notice. For it's not without reason that whenever he comes back to St Johns Cricket Academy and addresses the kids, much like his senior VVS Laxman used to do during his playing days, it's not the cricketing stories he narrates. It's all about "how to motivate yourself, how to not give up in cricket," John Manoj points out.

Clearly, Vihari knows a thing or two about that.