WV Raman – An all-rounder in the Making – One of the quaintly charming facets of cricket down the years through its commercialization and the modern-day techniques is its beach culture, principally on the sun-soaked shores of the Caribbean. Images of barefoot boys swinging their homemade bats in gay abandon dance before the mind.
In Madras, too, the game has a certain beach culture although nowhere in the same magnitude as in the West Indies. Sights of school boys and even children of the fisher folk playing on the Marina beach are not rare and the busy resident area fringing the marine drive Triplicane has more cricket playing youngsters and enthusiasts per square km than any other area in the city.
One of the most promising products of this culture in Madras is 18 years old left-hander all-rounder WV Raman who was one of the youngest players to make his Ranji Trophy debut for Tamil Nadu when he played against Delhi last year. It was indeed a very tough opening match for the callow youth, but Raman came through with some credit claiming three wickets.
Woorkeri Venkat Raman is born on May 23, 1965, into a cricket-loving family. His father was a club cricketer and an umpire. He was like many other cricketers in the neighborhood played his early cricket in the narrow serpentine lanes of triplicate. WV Raman first started playing competitive cricket for his school The Hindu High Secondary School.
At the age of 13, and since then it has been a steady and successful climb. At 14 Raman made his debut in the Vijay Merchant Trophy under-15 cricket tournament and bagged 12 wickets in two matches. However, his big success came in the Cooch-Behar trophy inter-zonal under-19 tournament for schoolboys.
The year before last, Woorkeri Raman picked’ up 14 wickets and got a brilliant 100 against East Zone in Bombay. Last year Raman led the ‘South Zone team and he led from the front. In the semifinal against East Zone, WV Raman turned in a memorable performance scoring a century (109) and then claiming five for 32. In the East Zone second innings, he takes his team to the final. His five wickets came in the space of 40 balls at the cost of just 11 runs.
In the final against the Central Zone Raman injured his bowling fingers while fielding and was out of the firing line on the third day as the Central batsmen Raman made merry. W.V Raman was who made a mighty “contribution in recent years to help his “local club Grand Prix gain sequence promotions in the TNCA league championship. Grand Prix now plays in the senior division with WV Raman’s skills among its chief weapons.
In the accompany of more accomplished L. Sivaramakrishnan, he could be a great asset for Tamil Nadu and for India in the years to come. However, his bowling will immensely improve if he begins to fly the ball more than he does right now. Perhaps a chance to improve his bowling action might do him a lot good.
