Product Code Database
Ravishankar Jayadritha Shastri (born 27 May 1962) is an Indian cricket commentator, former professional cricketer and head coach of the India national cricket team. As a player, he played for the India national cricket team between 1981 and 1992 in both Test cricket and One Day Internationals. Although he started his career as a left arm spin bowler, he later transformed into a batting all-rounder. Shastri was a member of the Indian team that won the 1983 Cricket World Cup. He won the C. K. Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award at the Indian cricket team annual award show NAMAN in 2024.
As a cricketer, Shastri was essentially defensive with his trademark "chapati" (a flick off the pads), but he could raise his strike rate when required. Due to his above-average height (he stood 6' 3" tall) and an upright stance, he had a limited number of shots against fast bowlers, but was able to put the lofted shot to good use against spin bowling. Ravi played either as an opening batsman or in the middle order.
The highlight of his career was when he was elected Champion of Champions in the World Championship of Cricket in Australia in 1985. In the same season, on 10 January 1985, "10th January 1985: Ravi Shastri Hits-Six-Sixes-in-an-Over" he equaled West Indian Garry Sobers's record of hitting six sixes in an over in first class cricket. He was regarded as a potential captain, but his image outside cricket,Raju Bharatan, "Ravi Shastri : Always 'on the ball'", Special Portrait, Indian Cricket 2002. injuries and tendency to lose form at crucial times meant that he captained India in only one Test match.
In domestic cricket, he played for Bombay and led them to the Ranji Trophy title in his final year of playing. He also played four seasons of county cricket for Glamorgan. He was forced to retire aged 31 due to a recurring knee injury. He has done commentary on behalf of BCCI in the matches that India play. In 2014, he became the director of Indian cricket team for a period of eight months from India's tour of England until the 2015 World Cup. On 13 July 2017, he was appointed as the head coach of Indian cricket team. On 16 August 2019, he was re-appointed as the head coach of the senior men's Indian team and remained in charge until the 2021 ICC T20 World Cup.
When not in Mumbai, Shastri lives in Alibaug.
On 18 March 1990, Shastri married Ritu Singh.Harsha Bhogle, "Howzat ! Ritu Singh appealed and Ravi Shastri walked up the aisle", Sportsworld, 4–10 April 1990, pp. 30-31 They have one daughter named Alekha Shastri. After 22 years of marriage, Shastri filed for divorce.
His only notable achievement in his first two Ranji seasons were bowling figures of 6-61, which he took against Delhi in the 1979–80 Ranji final that Bombay lost. While he was playing against Uttar Pradesh at Kanpur in the next season, he was called up to the squad touring New Zealand to stand in for the injured left arm spinner Dilip Doshi. Shastri arrived in Wellington the night before the first Test. His first over in Test cricket was a maiden to the New Zealand captain Geoff Howarth. In the second innings, he took 3 wickets in four balls, all to catches by Dilip Vengsarkar, to bring a quick close to the New Zealand innings. In the third Test, his seven won him the man of the match award, while his 15 wickets in the series were the highest for either side.
The Ranji final of 1984/85 turned out to be one of the finest matches in Indian domestic cricket history. A sleepy Gavaskar won the toss and batted. He could hardly close his eyes before Bombay was 3 down for 42. Batting at No.5, he scored his 20th and last Ranji Trophy hundred and took Bombay to 333. Shastri made 29 before he was bowled attempting to cut an Arm ball. Delhi was in early trouble before they were rescued by Chetan Chauhan, batting with a fractured finger in his last first class match. Ajay Sharma, in his first season, scored a hundred and took Delhi into the lead with nine wickets down.
The rules of the competition specified that in the event of a draw, the team with the first innings lead would be declared the winners. With two days and 100 minutes left, Bombay went for quick runs. A crowd of about 46,000 turned up for match on the fourth day and the organizers ran out of tickets. Shastri top scored with 76 as Bombay set Delhi 300 to win in a day and ninety minutes.
Except for the odd delivery, the ball spun slowly and afforded enough time for the batsmen to play their strokes. Early on the final day, Delhi reached 95 for no loss and then collapsed. His first wicket was Chauhan who was declared out caught behind with the ball having spun across the face of the bat without apparently touching it. The match changed dramatically and the batsmen lost their head. Gursharan Singh was lbw playing no stroke, Kirti Azad played on, Surinder Khanna was stumped after a few slogs. Shastri took 8 for 91; Bombay won by 90 runs. In the 50th year of Ranji trophy, it was their 30th title.Ayaz Memon, "Bombay pull off a remarkable win", Sportsweek, 17–23 April 1985
After the tour of Australia in 1985–86, he also began to decline as a bowler. Bombay lost to Haryana in the semifinal of the Ranji trophy but West Zone won the Duleep Trophy. His major contribution was as a bowler in the semifinal against North Zone on a flat wicket at Trivandrum. Like in the Ranji final, North looked the likely winner going into the last day, before he took 8 for 145.
He scored hundreds in the quarterfinal and semifinal of the Duleep trophy, but West Zone lost to South on first innings lead in the latter match. Shastri's only other score over fifty in the season was a particularly dull 125 against Pakistan in the Jaipur Test. He did well enough to be the man of the one day series. In the first one-day match against Pakistan he captained India for the first time, scoring 50 and taking three wickets. He took four wickets at Calcutta and 69* at Hyderabad in two thrilling finishes. Later at Nagpur with India facing a big target, he scored 52 in 40 balls.
In 1987, Glamorgan contracted Shastri to play for them. He stayed with them until 1991, with a break in 1990 due to India's tour of England. Shastri's presence did little for the fortunes of the county which finished at the bottom of the first class table in two of those seasons. Shastri topped 1000 runs in 1989 and scored hundreds in both innings against Middlesex. His best bowling performance of 7 for 49 (11 for 90) in the match came against Lancashire in 1988, where he got bounce and turn and was 'unplayable' according to Wisden. The almanack noticed that Shastri was already becoming reluctant to bowl.
1988 was by far the best of the seasons for Glamorgan in one day matches. They finished 5th in the Sunday League – up from 14 in 1987 – and reached the semifinal of the Benson & Hedges Cup. Shastri won the leading six hitter award for the Sunday league matches of 1988 with 14 sixes. He was part of the MCC team that played a Rest of the World team in the MCC bicentennial match at Lord's in 1987.
Bombay breezed through the West Zone league of the 1993–94 Ranji Trophy winning all four matches – a very rare feat Indian Cricket 1994 – by big margins. With the Test players away, Shastri captained the young team in the knockout matches. Bombay defeated Haryana by an innings and 202 runs in the pre quarter final but ran into trouble against Karnataka in the next round. Against 406, Bombay lost their first six for 174, before Shastri and Sairaj Bahutule added 259 in six hours. Shastri's individual score was 151. Bombay survived the best part of the last day to win on first innings lead. Shastri scored 612 runs in the season and took 17 wickets at 15. Bombay went on to beat Bengal in a low scoring final to lift the Ranji Trophy. It was their first championship since the famous win against Delhi nine years ago.
In September 1994, while in Sri Lanka covering the Singer World Series, Shastri announced his retirement from first class cricket.
It was the failure of the regular openers Pranab Roy and Ghulam Parkar that led to Shastri being made to open at the Oval against England in 1982. He distinguished himself by scoring 66 runs in that match. An injury in the webbing of his hand ruled him out of four of the Tests to be played in Pakistan. Forced again to open in the final Test at Karachi, against the fast bowling of Imran Khan (then at the peak of his career), he scored his first Test hundred. He later made another hundred against the West Indies in Antigua. Indian Cricket was impressed enough to suggest that, given time, he could become one of the best batsmen in the Indian team. Indian Cricket 1983, p.3, in the review of the tour of West Indies
Shastri was not selected to play in most of the important matches in the 1983 World Cup. In the series against the West Indies later that year, he again distinguished himself with his bold effort in batting against the domineering West Indian pace bowlers.
There were already signals that Shastri was being groomed as a future captain. Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar was coming to the end of his career and Kapil Dev, who had led India in the previous season, was expected to succeed him. Shastri appeared to be the next in line. He led the Young India side to Zimbabwe in early 1984. Against the touring English side in November, he led the India Under–25 to an innings win - the first defeat of England in a tour match in India for fifty years.
Around this time, Shastri also began to open the innings regularly in One-day cricket. He scored 102 against Australia in October – India's second hundred in ODIs – and made the same score against England at Barabati Stadium in December. Shastri had stood in for Gavaskar and opened with Srikkanth in two matches of the 1983 World Cup. The third time that they opened was at Cuttack and they set a world record of 188 for the first wicket. Later in the season, this partnership was to form the foundation for the Indian triumph in the WCC in Australia.
Shastri's success continued in Test matches against England. In the Wankhede Stadium Test his 235 run stand with wicket-keeper Syed Kirmani led to victory for India. His 142 improved upon the 139 at Faisalabad as his highest score.
In the third Test at Eden Gardens, Shastri made 111 in 357 balls and 455 minutes, though his innings was heavily interrupted by rain. With Mohammad Azharuddin he added 214 for the fifth wicket, another Indian record. When India started the second innings late in the final day, he was sent in to open, thus becoming one of the few batsmen to bat on all five days of a Test.
Shastri set another record for Bombay against Baroda in a West Zone Ranji match. His first hundred came up in 72 minutes and 80 balls and included nine fours and four sixes. The second took just 41 minutes and 43 balls. His 123 ball, 113-minute 200* became the fastest double hundred in first class history, beating the previous record by 7 minutes, and included 13 fours and 13 sixes. Six of the sixes came off a single over of the left arm spinner Tilak Raj. In terms of the number of sixes, it bettered the 58-year-old Indian record of CK Nayudu who had struck 11 sixes against a touring MCC team at Bombay Gymkhana in 1926–7. Shastri's unfinished sixth wicket stand of 204* with Ghulam Parkar, who contributed only 33 to the partnership, took only 83 minutes. In Baroda's second innings, Shastri took two wickets in four overs. Indian Cricket 1985
Shastri had a slow start to the tournament but finished with fifties in the last three matches. Srikkanth too scored three fifties and India posted century opening stands against Australia and in the final. India went in with two spinners for every match. It helped that all the matches were played at Melbourne and Sydney which have turning tracks and long boundaries. Sivaramakrishnan and Shastri claimed 18 wickets between them in five matches.
For his 182 runs and 8 wickets, Shastri was chosen as the man of the series which in this tournament was called 'The Champion of Champions'. He won an Audi 100 car for his efforts. By the special order of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Indian customs waived the heavy duty its import would have normally entailed. The Age, 19 March 1985
Shastri continued as vice captain to Kapil Dev in the 1985–86 season. This season and the England tour of 1986 were ordinary ones for him. Australia, Sri Lanka and Pakistan toured India in 1986–87. Shastri played a crucial role in the Tied Test at Madras against Australia, scoring 62 and 48*. When Indian middle order collapsed and India fell behind the run rate, his two sixes in quick succession off Off spin Greg Matthews came in handy. In the final Test at Bombay he scored 121*. As was becoming increasingly common, it was played in first and fourth gear. He hung around for around 30 minutes for the last run for his fifty and twice as long in the nineties. Yet he hit six sixes, three of which came after he completed his hundred. The huge six off left arm fast bowler Bruce Reid – a cross batted heave that went over longon – was particularly memorable. Six sixes in an innings was an Indian record at the time. But he was outshone by Dilip Vengsarkar who scored 164* in the same innings. They added a record 298* for the sixth wicket.
In early 1987, he presented a 15-minute coaching series which went by the name 'That's Cricket'. This was aired on the national channel Doordarshan on Sunday mornings. There were even rumours of an involvement with actress Amrita Singh.
India lost the final Test at Bangalore to lose the 1986–87 series against Pakistan. Kapil Dev was widely criticised in the media for his captaincy. The selectors retained him as captain in the Reliance World Cup at the beginning of the 1987–88 season. Shastri failed with the bat in the Reliance Cup but formed a successful bowling partnership with Maninder Singh, another left arm spinner. India topped its group but went down to England in the semifinal. Kapil Dev received more criticisms for skying a catch to deep midwicket when a win was still a possibility.
Vengsarkar had his left arm fractured in the third Test and Shastri captained India for the only time in his Test career. On an underprepared turning track in Madras, India won the toss and elected to bat first. Debutant Narendra Hirwani took 16 for 136 as India won by 255 runs to draw the series 1–1. Apart from this, Shastri did little with bat or ball. West Indies won 7 of the eight one day matches, he was the captain in six of them. Vengsarkar meanwhile picked up a six-month ban from BCCI for writing newspaper columns. So Shastri continued as the captain for a three nations tournament in Sharjah in April. Sri Lanka and New Zealand were the other teams and India won easily.
On the way back many of the Indian players took part in an exhibition match in United States. BCCI suspended the players. Though the suspension was later revoked, Vengsarkar was sacked. Srikkanth became the new captain and Shastri, yet again, the deputy. After an indifferent series in Pakistan, both were excluded from the tour of New Zealand in 1990. Azharuddin led an experimental team which a selector called the 'team of the nineties'. Within a few weeks, the phrase got the status of a joke. Shastri was recalled for the tour to England that summer as the vice-captain.
He topped this with 187 at the Oval. Journalist and commentator Harsha Bhogle's description of this innings holds true for many of Shastri's major efforts:Harsha Bhogle, The Joy of a Lifetime : India's tour of England 1990
Following the innings at the Oval, Shastri scored his career best score of 217 in the Irani trophy in the opening match of the Indian season and a top score of 88 on a very bad wicket in the Chandigarh Test against Sri Lanka. He carried his bat for 101* against the same opponents in a one-day match a week later, reaching the hundred with a two off the last ball. Next year in South Africa's first-ever ODI series on their return to international cricket, he scored 109 at Delhi, his fourth and last one day hundred. A series of abandoned tours meant India played few matches at home at this time.
At the end of 1991, India travelled to Australia for a five Test series, to be followed by the World Cup. Nine Network dubbed it the Indian Summer. The series was a disaster for India – they lost four of the Tests – and was rife with umpiring controversies. But it also saw the final flourishes in the careers of Shastri and Kapil Dev.
Shastri took 5 wickets for 15 runs against Australia in an early match in the World Series Cup. It was then the best bowling figures by an Indian in ODIs. Most of the wickets were gratuitously earned, though – three batsmen were caught on the Leg side boundary and another stumped. In the third Test at Sydney, he scored his only double hundred in Test cricket, the first by an Indian against Australia. He was dropped in the sixties by the Australian leg-spinner Shane Warne, who was making his debut, off his own bowling. Amidst frequent interruptions by rain, he completed his hundred early on the fourth day and a six off Warne brought up the 150. He finally fell to a tired shot at Warne after nine and a half hours, scoring 206 with 17 fours and the two sixes, thus becoming Warne's first Test wicket.
It was also during this innings that the knee injury that would soon end his career appeared for the first time. India had gone into the match with four pace bowlers and no regular spinners. Shastri was little more than a part-time bowler by this time. By the final day, pitch started taking spin. Shastri took four wickets in the second innings and Australia just about beat the clock to draw the match. India could well have won the match with another spinner. Wisden 1992 (accessed 25 June 2005) Cricinfo match reports of India in Australia 1991/2 (accessed 25 June 2005)
In their second match, India chased 238 to win in 50 overs against Australia. A rain interruption meant that the target was revised to 236 in 47 overs. Shastri took 67 balls for his 25; India went on to lose by one run. He was blamed for the defeat and dropped from the remaining matches of the tournament.
In the next season, South Africa hosted India for their first ever tour. Shastri opened in all four Tests and struggled to score runs. The only bright spot was a 16 ball 27 not out, in India's one day win at Centurion park. He had batted down the order in the one day matches of this series. In reference to the World Cup innings against Australia, he commented later that for once he knew what his exact role was.
India hosted England immediately after the South Africa series. The knee injury returned before the series and put Shastri out of cricket for eight months. He never again represented India in international cricket.
Under the guidance of head coach Ravi Shastri, India achieved one of their most historic Test victories at the Gabba during the 2020-21 Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Despite being plagued by injuries and fielding a relatively inexperienced side, Shastri’s leadership played a crucial role in fostering belief and resilience within the team. His strategic approach, combined with his ability to motivate players, helped India chase down 328 runs on the final day, breaking Australia’s 32-year unbeaten streak at the Gabba. The win not only secured a 2-1 series victory but also marked the end of a decent coaching career.
The 2021 Indian film 83, which is based on India's World Cup win, features Dhairya Karwa portraying Shastri's character.
|
|
