Sandeep Madhusudan Patil

Sandeep Madhusudan Patil is a batsman and a useful medium-pace bowler; he was a tower of strength to the Indian middle order for many years. His good looks, aggressive batsmanship and a penchant for big hits made Patil a natural crowd puller. He first started playing in ODI at the end of 1980 against Australia.

He became the Man of the Match for scoring a brilliant 64 runs. He was forced to bat in the second innings to avoid an innings defeat. He made 174 runs in the Adelaide Test which was the highest score by an Indian in Australia at the time. He was the hero of the World Cup 1983. But in the Tests against Pakistan and West Indies in 1983-84, he didn’t play well, and he could not maintain his place in the side.

Though he played well against England. He resigned after taking the Indian Team to the semi-final of the 2003 World Cup and returned to India for the next 18 months. He was named the chairman of the national selection panel in September 2012. He has also edited a Marathi sports magazine, Ekach Shatkar, and wrote Sandy Storm, his autobiography.

He played cricket for India between 1980 and 1986. Apart from being a hard-hitting lower-order batsman, he was handy medium-pacer who bowled off the wrong foot and attained much success in the international circuit on the back of some fantastic performances for the country.

But just a week before making his international debut, the hard-hitter scored his career-best Ranji innings for Mumbai against Saurashtra at the Wankhede Stadium, smashing 210 runs in 205 balls.

He has hit six boundaries in an over against England. He went on to serve as the coach of the Mumbai Champs in the ICL but returned to the mainstream when he cut ties with the unofficial league in 2009. He played well on the tour of Pakistan in 1982-83 but because of some personal problems, he, dropped out of the team to tour West Indies in 1983.