Sitanshu Kotak

कर्मण्ये वाधिका रस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन।

मा कर्म फल हेतु र्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्व कर्मणि॥

Translation: You have a right to “Karma” (actions) but never to any Fruits thereof. You should never be motivated by the results of your actions, nor should there be any attachment in not doing your prescribed activities.

Sometime back, Saurashtra's stalwart Sheldon Jackson went berserk and castigated the Indian selectors for being out of favour. But before Sheldon, there was another stalwart from Saurashtra who persevered silently without whinging. He became the U-19 coach, along with Paras Mhabrey last year, taking the reins from Rahul Dravid. This week, the spotlight is on the Saurashtran southpaw Sitanshu Kotak.

Saurashtra has a rich cricketing history. It is as old as Indian cricketing history. Ranjeetsinhji and Duleepsinhji, both hailed from Saurashtra. It was Saurashtra, where the university and college cricket started and picked up pace, but sadly the team didn't achieve anything significant for 60 years, since it's inception in 1950-51.

At present, Saurashtra is a formidable team which has a Ranji title under their belt and have been runner up three times. They boast of champion players like Sheldon Jackson, Ravindra Jadeja and Pujara, but Sitanshu Kotak formed the fulcrum of Saurashtra's hapless batting unit before the arrival of these giants. Kotak didn't have the innate ability of Sachin or the belligerence of Kohli. Although he had the attributes of Geoffrey Boycott and Chris Tavare. He wasn't pleasing to the eyes either. But he used to murder bowlers with his steely resolve and used to grind them to dust by just boring them to death. The spectators used to feel that they were subjected to Chinese torture. Kotak was unperturbed with whatever was hurled at him. The moniker "Rock of Gibraltar" seems so apt.

He made his debut for Saurashtra in the 1992-93 season and remained their sheet anchor for 20 long years. He made it a habit of bringing Saurashtra's innings on track after a flurry of quick wickets. Like Surendra Bhave, he fancied the mighty Mumbai team. Amol Mazumdar fondly talks about one of Kotak's marathon inmings against Mumbai, when he literally "killed" them, by scoring 168 off 543 balls in 796 minutes, which seemed like eternity. However, Sitanshu felt that his best knock was 118(384 minutes, 302 balls) against a star studded Karnataka's bowling line up of Srinath, Kumble and Dodda Ganesh, in his only Irani Cup appearance for Rest of India in 1999.

When asked about whether he has any regrets or complaints, he very diplomatically shrugged off the question and said that he has no complaints. However, he regretted losing the only Ranji final he was a part of in 2012-13, against the side he fancied. He was never off color against Mumbai, in his entire career, but he scored 14 and 0, in that final and Saurashtra suffered an ignominious defeat in just three days. 

As far as playing for India is concerned, he said that he accepted his fate, courtesy the fab four. The closest he came to wearing the Indian jersey was in 2007, when he went in as an injury replacement for one of the India A players in West Indies, but didn't get a game.

Kotak is a paragon of "stats not telling the whole story".