Naman's talent wasn’t utilized the way it should have been: Khurasiya

I am extremely grateful to Naman that he said he wanted to bat like me. He is an extremely talented cricketer. When you start your career, there’s always some senior who fascinates you with bowling or batting. So I am lucky that way that he wanted to bat like me but he is an extremely clean hitter. He is cleaner than me. He is more compact than me.He is fitter than me. To be honest he is far talented than me in most of the aspects.
I always felt that his talent wasn’t utilized the way it should have been. I always told him as a keeper you should not bat up the order because you are keeping for 90 overs and sometimes 140 overs and then you go and open the innings. He ended up getting LBW most of the times. Perhaps he was young. He is very fit guy so he thought he would manage with his fitness. Now lately he has shifted to the middle order and the results are coming through. With his potential and when he bats in the middle order, he can destroy any opposition because he is a lethal cricketer. He can destroy spinners, he plays pace bowling with lots of ease and confidence.
The day he was selected for the Indian team I was very happy. The reason being he came here as a 13-year-old boy from Ratlam and lived alone in the city. He was very young, he is a good-looking boy, he was very good looking then also but he never misused his freedom. He was extremely dedicated and hardworking. The sacrifice his family made is commendable. Sacrifice with right type of focus and commitment don’t go waste. Maybe God also has to also answer. He can give you less and bit late but he can’t ignore your sacrifices.
Naman shared dressing room with me, Narendra Hirwani, Rajesh Chauhan, Chandrakant Pandit, Sunil Lahore. We were different characters with different lifestyles; different values; we came from different domains of life; we had different ways of looking at life but the common thread was passion to win the game. We never took it easy in life because all of us from modest background. So we always knew we had nothing to fall back on. Probably he must have taken little bit from everything. The brilliance of individual is what he takes. Certain people take bad habits, certain people take good habits.
It’s very big for moment for us. To break it into the national team and that too at the Test level is commendable. Apart from everything you have, you have to have some luck. Harder you practice, luckier you get. You can’t say luck will just fall on you. It comes with a lot of base work. Hardwork, commitment and dedication are all those bases. I feel Naman deserves this luck. I am sure he will make this opportunity count.
(Amay Khurasiya, who played 12 One-dayers for India, spoke to Ruchir Mishra)