When Govinda Poddar, the Odisha No. 3, joins hands with another senior-pro Biplab Samantray for a good partnership, Odisha doesn’t falter immediately. There have been seasons when young players have lit up the batting with wonderful displays, but as it has turned out in the recent times, apart from a few, most of them have been one-match wonders. But Poddar, after that fine century on debut against Baroda in November 2010, has been the mainstay and probably the chip around which the entire batting line-up moves now. 

Graduating with a fine run of form in the age-group level, Poddar just waited for the opportunity to come good on the first-class circuit and the chance came in a home Ranji game against Baroda. A wonderfully-crafted 106 runs off 333 balls at the Barabati Stadium in Cuttack made sure that Odisha had its next talent who could actually go on to embrace the new dawn for the state cricket that had lost its way after the glorious batch of 2000-01 left the scene. However, cricket doesn’t often live up to the predicted narrative, rather builds one of its own. For Poddar, it turned out to be a terrifying one month. 

“One-match-wonder!” - Talks in Cuttack-Bhubaneswar favouring administrators grew louder.

“It was not easy facing pacers like Shalabh Srivastava, RP Singh, and Sudip Tyagi bowling with pace and swing. In my junior career, I never faced pacers like them and I somehow had the feeling that I was hard done. When I was defending, I could survive. But at the time, when I decided to go for runs, I simply couldn’t. It was not easy being there in the middle,” Poddar told SportsCafe, reminiscing one of the darkest periods of his cricketing career.

“I started doubting myself after the first season, but the good thing was that my friends back home were so supportive. Still, all my friends in Rourkela are from the world outside cricket and very rarely we discuss cricket. That helped me switch off and the incredible support that I had from my family helped me a lot from coming out of that situation. While that was great, nothing would have happened without Honey Bhai.”

Honey Bhai, or Late Harmohan Praharaj that Poddar was referring to, had been one of the pillars of Odisha cricket for long and led the team with a fair amount of success. It was Praharaj, Poddar always ran into for any advice related to his game, and the situation then was no different too.

While Poddar got a purpose to his career on his comeback match, he knew he had the talent to be a successful player, but some chinks needed to be worked on. His conversion of the 40s to 50s and the 80s to 100s were so minimal that one would be surprised to see the fluidity and confidence in his batting.

“I think, it was too much of pressure that I was taking on me for those fifties and 100s. Until 2015, that problem persisted and it was only when Rashmi Bhai (Rashmi Ranjan Parida) helped me out on the same. When he sits down to have a chat, he pinpoints things that very few can do. After a few conversations with him and another hour-long chat with Virender Sehwag, I started approaching the milestones in a very different way.

The explanation has actually been backed by numbers as he went on to score three centuries on his way to 555 runs in the 2015-16 season of the Ranji Trophy. The Syed Mushtaq Ali tournament that year also proved to be fruitful as he hit Maharashtra’s Shamshuzama Kazi for five sixes in an over to enthral the small Barabati crowd and the Royal Challengers Bangalore scouts, which never transpired to an IPL contract though. 

However, his role in the team came to the fore in the following season where his astute captaincy and tactical brilliance helped the team reach the quarter-finals - the team’s first knockout appearance since the team reached the semis in the 2000-01 season. Only one batsman Biplab Samantray crossed the 500-run barrier, but youngsters like Sandeep Pattnaik and Subhranshu Senapati lived up to the promise. But the contribution of Poddar’s bowling rotation during crucial times and keeping Basant Mohanty fresh for the second spell, more often than not, couldn’t be ignored at all.

His form in the limited-overs tournament that year helped him gain a place in the Board President’s XI team to play a warm-up match against Australia. But, a top-order batsman all his life, Poddar got a chance to bat as low as No. 8, even below the bowling all-rounders like Washington Sundar and Shivam Chaudhary. It took only five balls for Ashton Agar to have him caught by Steve Smith for Zero and a chance slipped off his fingers just like that. 

For long, Odisha cricket has been devoid of any star names since Debasish Mohanty, Shiv Sundar Das, and Sanjay Raul last played for India. For all his majesty in the domestic cricket, Basant Mohanty has never been close to selection. But in an association full of mediocrity mindset, Poddar is a clear anomaly. He has been there for long and the time has come to be the tour de force to blaze another trail.