With the CEAT award, the unassuming Prasad gets his due.

By Rohit Brijnath

Fast bowlers are supposed to eat crocodile steak (raw), be aggressive enough to get grown men to wet their pants, talk the sort of language that TV technicians replace with a bleep. It's a description that doesn't quite fit Venkatesh Prasad. He cooks sambar on tour (not the deer but the dal), can't talk now because he's busy changing his baby's nappies, and when he reaches the phone he's a symphony of "Ah ... well ... umm ... see..." Indeed, when he furiously shook his fist at Aamir Sohail at the World Cup last year, he says, "I was surprised by my behaviour when I saw the replay." But wimp he's not, for last week he walked home with the Ceat International Cricketer of the Year award (Brian Lara won it last year). The award only takes in the period April 1996-May 1997 but if you consider it was Prasad's debut Test year, and that he emerged with 55 Test wickets and 48 one-day wickets (cumulatively superior to anyone else), then we are talking ignored talent. His strike average may not be the best, and he may have played more matches than the rest: still, a quiet, sincere man has finally got his due.

If the recognition is late, then the problem is not just sambar. Neither is it his personality which is so understated that when he enters a room -- he's all of 6 ft 3 inches -- no one notices. No, the problem is his closest buddy Javagal Srinath. Srinath was "fast", which in Indian cricket was somewhat akin to a pygmy tribe producing an NBA basketball player. Predictably, with his arrival the nation went nuts. So when Prasad emerged, swinging the ball further than John Lever did with Vaseline when conditions were good but not quite as quick, the hysteria was muted. As Ian Chappell, one of the judges for the award, says: "He's not a tearaway, so he doesn't get the attention that men like Glenn McGrath or Srinath do."

Sometimes it got ruder: they said Srinath was softening batsmen for Prasad, that Srinath's injury before the West Indies tour -- when he was two wickets ahead of Prasad -- kept him out of the race. It is unfair. But Prasad is not the sort of man to whine: "No, no, this being overshadowed has never struck me. Sri is the fastest, a great guy and he's always helping me." Srinath repays the compliment: "He should have played for India earlier. He's got a beautiful outswinger and he knows how to rise to the occasion."

No kidding. In his second Test at Lord's he noticed that on the walls of the visitor's dressing room were listed two rolls of honour: those who had taken five wickets or scored a century at Lord's. Said Prasad quietly to Rahul Dravid: "I'll be on this board and you be on that one." Dravid missed by five runs, but Prasad with 5/76 was history. His bowling was demonstrative of many things: that in ideal conditions he is deadly (6/104 in Calcutta and 5/60 in Durban, both against South Africa, and 5/82 versus the West Indies in Bridgetown); and that the shy, soft-spoken man is a canny customer. Explains Chappell: "He's a quick learner. He hasn't got extreme pace so he has to outthink the batsman. So he uses deception very well, like the slower ball."

If Prasad is greedy for wickets, it could well be that time is spurring him on. At 28, almost peak age for most fast bowlers, he's yet to complete two years of Test cricket. Blame it on school. As a young boy he was a hockey player because his school didn't have a cricket team. So the tennis ball-fast bowler first gripped a cricket ball seriously when he was about 14. No wonder he's in a hurry.

He is not, despite the award, the finest fast bowler in the world yet. But in this week's first Test against the Sri Lankans, on a Mohali pitch that can come alive like a startled cobra, this charming, gifted bowler can prove that he is worthy of his award. "I am more confident now. I want to win matches for India," he says. Now, only if he'd eat that crocodile steak.

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