Nana Joshi

Who was Nana Joshi?

Padmanabh Govind "Nana" Joshi was a cricket player who kept wicket for India in Test cricket.

Joshi was born in Baroda, Gujarat, India in 1926. He first gained attention as a cricket player when he scored 100 notout for Central Province Governor's XI against the touring Commonwealth XI in addition to dismissing six batsmen. This earned him a place in two unofficial Tests against the same team. Joshi played cricket at a time when India had three or four wicket keepers of the same class. In a career that lasted for nearly ten years, Joshi played only twelve Test matches.

He made his Test debut against England in the first Test at Delhi in 1951-52. In the first innings, he caught two and brilliantly stumped two others, but his errors in the second helped England to save the match. Joshi was replaced by Madhav Mantri for the second Test, who in turn gave way to Probir Sen in the third. Joshi was picked for the fourth and discarded in favour of Sen for the final Test. Here Sen stumped five batsmen and Joshi found himself out of the team to tour England in 1952.

Writing in 1985, N. S. Ramaswami remembered that Joshi "impressed as a dapper and neat performer. Between the overs he walked from wicket to wicket with a certain jauntiness. He seemed to wear the gloves as a lady might at a fashionable ball." Yet in his opinion, Joshi came lower down in the hierarchy of contemporary wicket keepers. Sen and Mantri occupied the top rung, Naren Tamhane came next, followed by Joshi.