rahul sanghvi

Rahul Sanghvi

Left arm spinners are always a special breed of bowlers in Cricket; one may call them Ivory Bowlers for a lot of reasons: they are different from traditional right-handed bowlers and more so because they are so rare! Right from the days of Bishen Bedi, later Maninder Singh, the left arm brigade has been a rare sight. One such Ivory Bowler who has stepped into the shoes of this rare Class of bowlers is Rahul Laxman Sanghvi.

Having been born in Surat, Gujarat, Rahul Sanghvi played most of his Ranji cricket for Delhi ever since his debut in the 1994-95 season; actually he made his ranji debut for railways, but moved over to play for the Delhi team in the next season.


His bowling action is so uncomplicated, just a walk of 5-6 steps around the wicket, (bowling around the wicket is something one associates with left armers) and his bowling has that loop and flight. One may say he looks a lazy bowler. Sanghvi is a bowler in the traditional mould, he would fearlessly put every ball in that right length, ever always willing to beat and fox the batsmen into mistakes. His way of taking wickets is simple – earn your wicket, stick to the basics.

Rahul’s strength is his line and length; he maintains an impeccable line just outside the offstump of the batsman, with that flighted delivery, he makes sure the batsmen always comes forward and goes for the drive.

Joy is never shortlived, but it comes in a short span of time in every person’s life! More relevant in any One Day game where things happen very fast. Sanghvi had his most joyous moment in First Class Cricket on November 8, 1997, in the Ranji ODI season; it was Delhi versus Himachal Pradesh at the Indira Gandhi Stadium, Una, India.

After being bowled out for 173, Delhi looked upon its bowlers to make a match to do something special. And Sanghvi did not let his captain Ajay Sharma down at all. In fact he had decided that Delhi was going to win that game by all means. After some peppering bowling by the seamers, Sharma and Sanghvi came in as first and second change bowlers. While the others nagged away trying endlessly for wickets, Sanghvi found his perfect rhythm and cast a magical spell of 9.5-2-15-8!

Sanghvi’s harvest of wickets has always been consistent; 87 matches bore him 256 wickets, with 12 five wicket hauls and ten wickets for the match twice.

By far, he has been amongst the best spinners in the domestic circuit with wickets in almost every match. The best bowling of his career has been the 7-42 he got against Services (everybody has something special against that team, it seems!) in mid December 1995.

Sanghvi is more than an useful batsman in the lower half of the batting order and sticks to his task of frustrating the opposition bowlers and picking up the valuable runs. He has a fifty in first class records, when he got it for Indian Board Presidents XI against the visiting West Indies A team.

Sanghvi has played for the National team in 10 ODIs and a lone test match. His performance for India wasn’t all that bad at all. His ODI debut came in 1997-98, while his lone test match came in the 2001 season.

Always handy for the team with the bat and more than a handful with the ball makes Sanghvi a star from Delhi to watch out in the near future. This season’s Ranji holds much more promise to come from this cheeky lad from Gujarat.

With age on his hand (he just crossed 30!), Sanghvi is here to mesmerize us all with lots more cricket to come!