India, Sept. 14 -- There was a point in Indian cricket when Suresh Raina, Dinesh Karthik and a young left-handed opener from Nagpur were travelling through the same age-group system, sharing dressing rooms and imagining roughly the same destination. Raina even remembered rooming with him and Karthik during an India Under-17 tour of Sri Lanka, long before all three knew how differently their careers would eventually unfold.

A few years later, another gifted Indian generation was preparing for the 2004 Under-19 World Cup in Bangladesh. The squad included Shikhar Dhawan, Ambati Rayudu, Raina, Karthik, Robin Uthappa and RP Singh, and the Nagpur batter was supposed to be part of it too until a finger injury ruled him out shortly before the to...