An 89 in your second ODI should buy you time. A third game at least, maybe a small run in the side, certainly not the end of the road. Add a Player-of-the-Match award and it starts to feel like the beginning of something.
For Gagan Khoda, it was the full story.
Two ODIs in six days in May 1998.
115 runs at 57.50.
One half-century. One match award.
And then, nothing.
A career that kept knocking on the door
Khoda did not arrive at that Bengaluru night as a bolt from the blue. By then, Indian cricket had known his name for years. Rajasthan had known it even longer.
He was 17 when he walked into the Ranji Trophy and straight into the scorebook. A debut hundred – 116 against Uttar Pradesh in 1991 – announced an opener with both appetite and method. Three seasons later, he turned promise into noise. In 1994-95, he piled up 618 Ranji runs at 77.25, with two centuries and two fifties, dragging himself into the national conversation.
The defining innings of that campaign came, again, against Uttar Pradesh. Rajasthan conceded 487, replied with 237 and stared at the exit. Khoda then dug in and refused to leave. An unbeaten 237 in the second innings, 417/5 on the board, and still Rajasthan went out on first-innings deficit. The team lost; the opener didn’t. He walked away tagged as a man who could bat forever and turn starts into monsters.
By 1997, that reputation had carried him to the edge of a Test cap. He travelled with India’s Test squad to Sri Lanka, close enough to touch the blazer but not to wear it. The door stayed shut, yet his trajectory kept climbing. A year later, he captained India A in Pakistan, leading a squad packed with future internationals – Ajit Agarkar, Wasim Jaffer, Murali Kartik, MSK Prasad, Sairaj Bahutule, Reetinder Sodhi.
The innings that followed in Lahore sounded like a demand, not a request.
Opening against Pakistan A, Khoda faced Aaqib Javed, Abdul Razzaq and Shahid Afridi and ground out 189 from 328 balls. Nearly seven hours at the crease, 11 short of a double hundred, another hefty entry on a growing domestic and representative résumé. He had done what selectors often ask of fringe players: dominate the level below.
Soon after, the India call finally came.
Six days in blue
Bengaluru, May 1998. Kenya set India 224, their 223/9 offering a target that required care more than panic. Sourav Ganguly fell early for nine. The chase needed rebuilding, and it came from an unlikely axis: Rahul Dravid, the rising constant, and Gagan Khoda, the temporary opportunity.
They added 98 for the second wicket. Dravid ticked the board along; Khoda anchored, then expanded. His 89 took 129 balls, laced with eight fours, the sort of innings that calms a dressing room and strangles an opposition. He stayed almost to the end, leaving India in complete control before a four-wicket win. When the dust settled, he was India’s top scorer and the Player of the Match.
At that moment, his ODI numbers glowed: 115 runs from two innings, average 57.50. For most players, that would be the foundation of a career. For Khoda, those figures froze in time. They never moved again.
The reason sat above him in the order. As soon as India’s established openers returned, the window slammed shut. Sachin Tendulkar and Navjot Singh Sidhu walked back into the XI, and Khoda slipped to the margins. He stayed in the squad for the final of the triangular tournament, travelled to Sri Lanka for the Nidahas Trophy, but did not cross the rope. He went to the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur as well, though those matches never carried ODI status.
By year’s end, the brief gap created by the temporary absence of senior players had closed. Khoda’s name drifted out of team sheets and, eventually, out of selection meetings. There would be no third ODI.
The 300* that refused to be ignored
Back home, domestic cricket still listened. In February 2001, Khoda produced the innings of his life.
Central Zone versus South Zone in the Duleep Trophy. The South attack read like a roll call of India’s new-ball era: Javagal Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad, backed by Sunil Joshi and Venkatapathy Raju. On paper, it was a stern examination. On the field, it turned into a one-man occupation.
Khoda batted for 610 minutes. Faced 467 deliveries. When Central Zone finally declared at 550/7, he was unbeaten on 300, having struck 33 fours and six sixes. Srinath did not take a wicket. Neither did Prasad. Central Zone won by an innings and 14 runs, and Khoda walked off with a triple century against an attack that had led India.
It did what big domestic innings are supposed to do: it pulled him back into the selectors’ thoughts. He earned another India A nod, this time against the touring Australians. The final step, though, remained out of reach. The senior recall never came. Those two ODIs in May 1998 stayed, stubbornly, as the full extent of his international career.
Lost in a golden generation
The numbers he left behind in Indian cricket are not the story of a fringe player. Khoda finished with 8,516 first-class runs, 20 centuries, 42 fifties. His average hovered just under 40. In List A cricket, he scored nearly 4,500 runs at over 40, with 10 hundreds.
He built that record in an era when batting spots for India were some of the most expensive real estate in the sport. Tendulkar, Ganguly and Rahul Dravid were already locked in. Sidhu, when fit, remained a viable option at the top. VVS Laxman was emerging. Around them, a queue of domestic heavyweights jostled for the few vacancies in a powerful batting generation.
Even within that crowded field, Khoda’s path stands out. A Ranji century on debut at 17. A season averaging 77.25. Inclusion in a Test squad. India A captaincy. A 189 in Pakistan. An 89 and a Player-of-the-Match award in just his second ODI. A 300 not out against an attack led by Srinath and Prasad.
Each time he seemed to reach the threshold of something bigger, the door stayed locked.
From hopeful to selector
More than a decade after his last innings, Khoda returned to the national setup in a different avatar. In 2015, he was appointed to India’s senior selection committee, one of the men now charged with deciding which domestic performers would get the chances he had chased for so long.
Few understand the thin margins of opportunity better than someone who averaged 57.50 in ODIs and never played a third.
