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England's Solanki wants to pip India
When England and Indian cricketers meet in the first of the three NatWest Challenge matches, all eyes will be focused on a dashing England batsman of Indian origin: Vikram Solanki.
When England and Indian cricketers meet in the first of the three NatWest Challenge matches, all eyes will be focused on a dashing England batsman of Indian origin: Vikram Solanki.
Is the Udaipur-born the answer to England's opening puzzle: Who will partner Marcus Trescothick?
The three matches against India will tell, for sure, but 28-year-old Solanki has burst into the England team months after being dropped following a string of poor performances in Bangladesh.
Just days ago the Worcestershire batsman hit a superb 115 to make a match of it against one-day titans Gloucestershire, but it was still not enough to prevent an eight-wicket defeat in the final at the Lord's.
Solanki now has another chance to adapt his game to the highest level when he joins the England team.
In 21 one-day internationals over more than four years, he has barely averaged 20 and was last dispensed with after making just 11 in three games against Bangladesh last November.
However, the word from the dressing room is that is that he is finally ready for the big show. "I think England will be seeing a different Vikram this time around. He is a more mature cricketer and has tightened up every aspect of his game," said Worcestershire's Australian coach Tom Moody.
"I'll bat wherever they want me to," Solanki said, after Saturday's defeat. "I've learned from my mistakes - and in the past I've made plenty of them."
For the first eight years of his life, Solanki did not set foot out of Rajasthan. Yet he considers himself no less English.
Some astute observers of the game regard Solanki as a potential "a right-handed David Gower" -- such is the elegance of his stroke making, to say nothing of the brilliance of his fielding when he is on form.
His mother is a white-skinned Englishwoman, born Florabel Petula Lawford, but she is thoroughly Indianised. She wears a sari and is a practising Hindu.
Florabel had grown up on the sub-continent, where her father worked, but unlike most expatriates she embraced the culture. She was fluent in several southern Indian languages but didn't speak Hindi.
She took Hindi lessons and her teacher was one Vijay Singh Solanki. They fell in love, married, and a future England cricketer was born.
"It would make a great Bollywood script," remarks Solanki, with a chuckle.
"It wasn't at all easy for them and I think both sets of parents were opposed to them marrying."
