Pursued my Test dream at the wrong time, feels Robin Uthappa

A neat and orthodox batsman, Robin Uthappa’s rise to the Indian team through his mind-boggling exploits in the 2005 and 2006 editions of Challenger Trophy, against the likes of Zaheer Khan, Murali Kartik and RP Singh, caught the eyeballs and he was propelled to the Indian side soon after. 

While he had a decent limited-overs career, at international and the IPL level, he could never don the whites for the Indian team. Uthappa revealed that his desperation to play for India forced him to alter his technique at the wrong age of 25, but that never paid off. 

"My biggest goal was to play Test cricket for India. Had I pursued that at 20-21, I probably by this time would've played Test cricket. I wanted to have no regrets at the end of my career and wanted to be sure that I brought the best out of me," Uthappa said during a podcast session of Rajasthan Royals.

To go for that pursuit, Uthappa started working with Pravin Amre and even changed his technique, only to be deflated by his white-ball tendencies. The change of guard in Indian cricket resulted in Uthappa’s dream ending up as a dream only.

"Hence at 25, I decided to overhaul my batting technique under Pravin Amre and became a more technically better batsman who could be there for long and bat for long hours and be more consistent, which made me let go of some of my batting aggression in the process. I thought to play Test cricket for India, I needed to alter my technique .......In hindsight, I may have pursued the goal at the wrong time at 25 years of age,” the Karnataka batsman stated.