Prithvi Shaw last played for India in 2021

Prithvi Shaw, once the U19 captain to some of India's current ODI cricketers, has fallen far, far behind in the pecking order. Aadya Sharma writes about the sharp fall of a dreamy 

Three summers ago, on another Sri Lanka tour, Prithvi Shaw walked out wearing an India kit, and hasn't since. He fell for a first-ball duck – the only T20I he has played so far.

Interestingly, it also marked the unofficial start of another coaching stint: Rahul Dravid’s. Three years before that, Dravid and Shaw stood at the Bay Oval in Tauranga, posing for shutterbugs after securing the 2018 U19 World Cup title. Shaw, already a teenage prodigy, had taken the next step towards what looked like a certainly bright future.

And yet, in Dravid’s three years as head coach of the senior team, Shaw did not get a single game.

In those three years, Shaw has been the subject of considerable media conjecture and judgement. In an interview with Wisden last year, he spoke about the troubles of incessant limelight, and how it severely affected his mental health.

“If I go out, people will harass,” he said.

“When I was dropped [from the Indian team], I didn’t get to know the reason,” Shaw said on his continued absence from the top level. “Someone was saying it could be fitness. But of course I came here [to Bengaluru] and cleared all the tests at the National Cricket Academy, again scored runs and again came back to the T20I team. But again, didn’t get a chance in the West Indies [in 2023].”

Today, Shaw is far adrift of an India cap. In India’s first series after their T20 World Cup win, the onus of captaincy fell on Shubman Gill, Shaw’s deputy at the U19 tournament. For years, Shaw and Gill ran a silent race to be India’s next big thing. Gill is far, far in the lead now.

While India are currently in Sri Lanka, the last country he toured internationally, Shaw is representing Northamptonshire in the One-Day Cup. His scores so far read 9 (9), 40 (34), 76 (58) and 97 (71), the joint second-most in the tournament so far. No one among the top ten run-getters have a better strike rate (129.06).

He wasn't as prolific in the County Championship: in four innings, he totalled 93 runs with a best of 37. Indian players aren't allowed to feature in foreign T20 leagues, which means Shaw will have to wait until the domestic season in India to play the shortest format.

Last season, ahead of the domestic season, there was more agony in store. He couldn't feature in Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy or the Vijay Hazare Trophy, having suffered a Grade-2 tear of the ligament of his knee. He did participate partly in the Ranji Trophy, scoring 451 runs at 50.11, with a fifty and a hundred. While the numbers may be solid, they're not enough to be close to national contention. Fitness issues haven’t helped.

To start with, in limited-overs cricket, India's options are fast growing. Two of Shaw's U19 teammates – Riyan Parag and Abhishek Sharma – made their India debut after the T20 World Cup win. Riyan, in fact, has made it to the ODI squad too, and is likely to be given a long run. Given Abhishek's spectacular IPL 2024, there's one more opening contender for Shaw to compete with.

The IPL is often the route to national attention, or to make a comeback to where you once stood. Shaw's last two seasons have been forgettable. He's played only half the season both times, managing two fifties in 16 games. The strike rate rose up from 2023 (124.71) to 2024 (163.64), but he couldn't fit in the Delhi Capitals composition, with the franchise preferring the 21-year-old Abhishek Porel, and then giving Jake Fraser McGurk a go at the top.

Ricky Ponting, the former Delhi Capitals coach, has followed Shaw's progress closely over the last few years. In a recent interview with Cricbuzz, he seemed to have lost patience with Shaw's up-and-down journey.

"I mean to start with I don't like talking about individual players, but Prithvi shouldn't be an outlier," Ponting said. "He should be someone that's in every team; the first pick in most teams with the skill that he's got. He's had a chance to represent India as a youngster, making a hundred on his Test debut,"

"And as you say, halfway through this year, we couldn't find a slot for him in our DC team. So that's disappointing for me as a coach not to be able to make certain players better and get the best out of them. But sometimes there's only so much you can give and so many times you can try."

"When you feel like you're not making players better and they're not doing what you need for the team, then you've got to look for other players that can do it for you. So that then comes back to the player. With him in particular I've had a lot of chats with him, a lot of conversations to try and make him a better cricketer".

On Friday, while Shaw was busy punching through the off side in the blue Northants kit, Arshdeep Singh, another of his teammates from the same World Cup, was piercing through the Sri Lanka top order in a different blue. Looking at the ease with which Shaw’s shots came out – the same drives and cuts that made him a teenage sensation, you wondered if he was too good for a level populated by county second teamers and just-picked teenagers.

Some say that Shaw’s pedigree deserves more chances than the 12 India appearances he has clocked so far, but it’s more to do with how far he’s fallen down the pecking order. As Ponting pointed out, Shaw’s still just 24, and still has a long way to go. But each missed opportunity only pushes him further away from reclaiming the recognition he once enjoyed.

Looking at the success of Gill and Arshdeep, and the rise of Riyan and Abhishek, you realise how far he needs to catch up.

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