Ashish Bagai

Ashish Bagai, the Indian-born Canadian, is an intelligent wicketkeeper and one of Canada's most respected cricket players. He began playing age-group cricket in Canada representing the Under-19 team when he was just 15 and later went on to captain them. Not soon after in 1999-2000, at the tender age of 17, he made the debut for the full-Canadian side. He was also a part of the 2001 side that finished third in the ICC trophy and gained entry in the 2003 World Cup. He was not as effective in the tournament and displayed a mediocre performance.

However, a few years later, things started improving for Bagai. The turning point of all was the World Cricket League of 2007 in Nairobi, in which he scored an unbeaten 137 against Scotland, his first ton in the senior side. A second century followed a few days later against Ireland. At the end of the tournament, he was the leading run-scorer and was named as the Man of the Series. He had scored as much as 345 runs at an impressive 86.25. Just a few months later, he was named as Canada's captain for the Intercontinental Cup Final against Ireland. However, things changed soon after he decided to accept a job in UK in the later half of 2007 and he became unavailable for the team. He came back in 2009 and was again appointed as the captain when he left a successful banking job in UK to move back to to Canada.

Bagai captained the Canadian side in the 2011 World Cup. He scored an unbeaten 64 against Kenya in their first game. In the next ODI against New Zealand, he scored 84 putting up a 100+ stand along with Jimmy Hansra. Unfortunately, Canada lost that game by 70 runs as New Zealand had scored 358 in the first innings. After the World Cup, Bagai hung up his boots deciding to pursue an MBA.

Things took a dramatic turn when in 2013, Bagai signed on a national team central contract with Cricket Canada becoming available for a period of 9 months upto February 2014. This decision came after he completed his graduation from business school. However, it did not work well in his favour. After leading Canada in an unsuccessful campaign in the World T20 Qualifier where Canada finished 12th out of the 16 teams, he finally announced his retirement from the game.

Bagai has scored 1964 runs at an average of 37.76 in 62 ODIs, and his List A career produced 2649 runs in 96 games.

By Sonali Dhulap

As of May 2014