India, Aug. 31 -- An 89 in your second ODI should normally buy you a third. Add a Player-of-the-Match award, and the expectation becomes even stronger. Yet one Indian opener walked away from Bengaluru in May 1998 after doing exactly that and never appeared in another international match. His entire ODI career lasted six days and produced 115 runs at an average of 57.50, one half-century and one match award.

That brief international run had not come from nowhere. Years of domestic cricket had already carried him into an Indian Test squad, while a 189 as India A captain in Pakistan had pushed him further towards the senior side only months before his ODI debut. Even after those two internationals became his last, he returned to domestic cr...