There was a phase in Indian cricket when one man was asked to do the job of two. Manoj Prabhakar would take the new ball, hunt for swing against the best batters in the world, then pad up and walk straight back out to face their quickest bowlers. No breather. No hiding at No. 7. Across his career, he opened both the batting and the bowling in 20 Tests and 45 ODIs. It was as demanding a double role as the game could offer.
He did not arrive there on a straight, golden path. Prabhakar debuted for India in 1984, then spent years hovering at the edge of selection, in and out, never quite secure. His way back was forged not through hype, but through a domestic season so heavy with runs and wickets that the selectors could no longer look past him.
In 1988-89, as Delhi surged to the Ranji Trophy title, Prabhakar produced numbers that read like a manifesto. He scored 532 runs at an average of 76 and finished as the tournament’s leading wicket-taker with 39. Among those runs stood a career-best 229 not out against Himachal Pradesh. In the quarter-final against Orissa, he ripped through them with 6 for 65 and 4 for 42 for a ten-wicket match haul. In the final against Bengal, another four-wicket burst tilted the contest Delhi’s way. For a man trying to claw his way back into the India side, it was an overwhelming statement.
The signs, though, had been visible earlier. In the 1983-84 Ranji Trophy final against Bombay, facing a line-up that included Sunil Gavaskar and Dilip Vengsarkar, he was pushed up to open. He responded with 122 in Delhi’s second innings, a knock that spoke of both temperament and technique. Five days after that final, he made his ODI debut against Sri Lanka and delivered 2 for 16 from his 10 overs. The template was there already: a cricketer who could shape a match with bat or ball.
Prabhakar would grow into one of India’s more unusual all-rounders, and his career would eventually contain almost everything: a spectacular domestic comeback, centuries at the top of the order, hostile new-ball spells in Pakistan, a World Cup outing that turned into a personal nightmare, and, after retirement, a match-fixing controversy that altered how his name was remembered.
The comeback began in earnest with that Ranji season and culminated in a recall for the 1989 tour of Pakistan, a series etched in history as Sachin Tendulkar’s arrival. While a teenager from Mumbai was taking his first steps in international cricket, Prabhakar was trying to rebuild his own story.
He did it with the ball in hand. At Karachi he took 5 for 104. At Faisalabad he followed with 6 for 132. In Pakistan, against a batting line-up hardened in their own conditions and in an era ruled by Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and the emerging Waqar Younis, Prabhakar suddenly stood as India’s new-ball spearhead. He did not rely on raw pace. He relied on craft.
He swung the new ball, rolled his fingers over cutters, changed pace subtly, and later added the art of reverse swing with the old ball. That skillset, built on movement and intelligence rather than intimidation, allowed him to survive and succeed when many faster bowlers faded.
Then came the second act: his batting.
What began as a useful lower-order option grew into a genuine opening role. In New Zealand in 1990, with Richard Hadlee operating in his own backyard, Prabhakar dug in at Napier. He faced 268 balls for his 95, wearing down the attack, refusing to give in. At Auckland later in the series, he stayed unbeaten on 63, sharing an unbroken 149-run opening stand with WV Raman as India saved the Test. He was not the sort of opener who blew attacks away. He was the one who absorbed the blows.
Often his job was simple, brutal, and unglamorous: take the shine off, blunt the new ball, and hand a softer, more manageable situation to India’s middle order. On certain days, that resistance turned into something more expansive. He had already struck an ODI century against Pakistan in Jamshedpur in 1987, a 106 from 121 balls that earned him Player of the Match even though India lost. His lone Test hundred arrived in 1994 at Mohali, a well-constructed 120 against the West Indies.
By the time his international career wound down, the numbers told one part of the story. In Tests, he scored 1,600 runs at 32.65 and took 96 wickets. In ODIs, he compiled 1,858 runs and 157 wickets. His first-class record, though, better captured his all-round weight: 7,469 runs at 41.49 and 385 wickets. These were the statistics of a cricketer who, at his peak, could shape a game from either end of the scorecard.
Yet the closing chapters of his playing days would be remembered for very different reasons. A strange one-day chase late in his career, never proven to be fixed but endlessly dissected during later corruption investigations, clung stubbornly to his reputation. The questions never fully went away.
Then came the 1996 World Cup and the night that froze his India career.
At Delhi, against Sri Lanka, Sachin Tendulkar produced a masterful 137 to carry India to 271 for 3. Prabhakar, opening with him, scratched his way to seven from 36 balls, unable to break free. It was an innings out of rhythm with the game, and the pressure mounted.
With the ball, the evening unraveled completely. Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana tore into India’s seamers with ferocious intent. Prabhakar’s first four overs disappeared for 47 runs. When he returned later, the man who had opened the bowling for India for years abandoned his seamers and turned to off-spin, searching for any way to stem the flow as Sri Lanka cruised towards victory.
That night became his final international appearance.
The image was stark, almost cruel in its symbolism: a bowler who had once taken five and six wickets in successive Tests in Pakistan, who had carried India’s new ball across continents, reduced to bowling part-time off-spin in a desperate attempt to survive his last spell in India colours.
