The Unforgotten Journey of Salil Ankola

On a hazy Karachi morning in November 1989, four young men walked into Test cricket with the same sense of possibility and the same newness of a freshly stitched cap. By nightfall, the game had quietly sorted them into very different destinies.

One was a 16-year-old from Mumbai whose name would soon swallow the sport whole: Sachin Tendulkar. Another, an 18-year-old tearaway from Pakistan, Waqar Younis, who would grow into one of the most feared masters of reverse swing. Both would go on to redraw the record books.

In that same XI, sharing that same stage, stood Salil Ankola.

He would get one Test. Just one.

A rocket rise from nowhere

Ankola did not tiptoe into first-class cricket. He kicked the door down.

For Maharashtra in the 1988-89 season, the right-arm quick announced himself against Gujarat with the kind of performance that makes selectors sit up. He scored 43 and ripped through the batting with six wickets in an innings, a hat-trick buried inside that haul. No gentle easing-in, no quiet learning curve.

He followed it up immediately. Against Baroda, another six-for, 6 for 51. By the end of that debut season he had 27 wickets at 20.18, three five-wicket hauls, and the sort of numbers that, for a young Indian fast bowler in the late 1980s, simply could not be ignored.

India were heading to Pakistan, to face Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and the emerging Waqar. It was as hostile an audition as a seamer could ask for. Ankola forced his way onto the tour.

Before the Tests even began, he strengthened his case. Playing for India against BCCP Patron's XI, he took 6 for 77 in the first innings and added two more in the second. The selectors had seen enough. When India named their XI for the first Test at the National Stadium in Karachi, Salil Ankola’s name was on it.

Two wickets, a limp, and a full stop

History remembers that match as the beginning of two epic careers. Tendulkar’s first step to 200 Tests and 15,921 runs. Waqar’s launchpad to 87 Tests and 373 wickets.

Ankola’s debut is usually just a footnote. But he did leave his mark.

His first Test wicket was a significant one: Saleem Malik, caught by Mohammad Azharuddin for 36. In Pakistan’s second innings he added the wicket of wicketkeeper Saleem Yousuf. Two wickets on debut, in Pakistan, in a cauldron. Not a bad start at all.

They would be the only two Test wickets he ever took.

Ankola picked up an injury after Karachi and missed the remaining three Tests of the series. At 21, it felt like a pause. A brief detour before the road resumed. Instead, it became a dead end. He hovered around India’s squads, stayed in the conversation, but the second cap never came.

His international career did not vanish entirely. On that same Pakistan tour he debuted in ODIs, and the format would return to him in bursts over the next several years. But the Test chapter closed almost as soon as it opened.

ODI flashes, World Cup frustration

There were days when the promise everyone had seen in him flashed again.

In the 1993 Hero Cup, against South Africa at Mohali, Ankola produced his best ODI figures: 3 for 33, a reminder of the bowler who had torn through domestic line-ups. On India’s 1994 tour of New Zealand he played four ODIs, doing enough to stay in the mix.

The high point of recognition arrived in 1996. A home World Cup, and Ankola in the squad. For any Indian cricketer, that tournament carried a special weight. Yet even that moment arrived with a familiar sting.

He played only once, against eventual champions Sri Lanka in Delhi. Five overs, 0 for 28, as Sri Lanka eased past India’s 271. No fairytale, no statement spell to reclaim a career.

By February 1997, his ODI journey was done. Twenty matches across more than seven years, 13 wickets at 47.30. Stark, unforgiving numbers when set against what he had done in domestic cricket.

A bowler built for more

Strip away the international column and Ankola’s record looks very different.

Across 54 first-class matches, he took 181 wickets at under 26 apiece, with eight five-wicket hauls. His best innings figures, 6 for 47, underlined the cutting edge he carried when fit and firing.

But his body kept betraying him. Injuries circled back, again and again. Determined to fight on, Ankola worked with former England fast bowler Frank Tyson, then involved with Mumbai’s fast-bowling programme. He shortened his run-up, altered his action, tried to ease the strain on his body and sharpen his control.

There were comebacks. Fresh selections. Renewed hope. Never a sustained run.

The timing of his career did him no favours. As Javagal Srinath settled in as India’s spearhead and Manoj Prabhakar, Venkatesh Prasad and others jostled for places, Ankola found himself trapped on the fringe, close enough to see the opportunity but rarely close enough to seize it.

By 1997, the battle was effectively over. A bone tumour on his shin hastened the end, forcing him out at 28. For a bowler who had exploded into first-class cricket less than a decade earlier, it was a brutally early exit.

Reinvention, and a different kind of fight

Ankola’s story did not follow the familiar path of ex-cricketer turned commentator or coach. He stepped into a different world altogether.

He moved into acting, appearing in television serials and films, carving out a second career away from the crease. Eventually, the game drew him back in another capacity. He became Mumbai’s chief selector and later served on India’s senior men’s national selection committee, this time sitting on the side of the table that had once judged him.

Off the field, another, more private battle emerged.

In recent years, Ankola has spoken openly about his struggle with severe depression. He underwent treatment at a mental health care centre near Pune in 2026 after a period marked by his mother’s death and other personal difficulties. In an interview with HT City in July, he said the treatment had helped him and that he now felt “much better and at peace”. He urged others facing similar struggles to seek professional help, to push back against the stigma that keeps so many silent.

For a man whose cricket career was shaped by things that went wrong with his body, this was a different kind of courage: choosing to speak, to be seen, when it might have been easier to disappear.

One morning in Karachi

Yet, whenever his name surfaces in cricket conversations, the story loops back to that single morning in Karachi.

Same ground. Same debut. Same date. Tendulkar, Waqar, Ankola – all international cricketers for the first time. No one in that stadium, no selector, no team-mate, no fan, could have guessed how far apart their paths would drift.

Tendulkar would play Test cricket for 24 more years. Waqar would terrorise batters around the world and finish with hundreds of international wickets. Salil Ankola would take two wickets in that match, walk off injured, and never again wear India’s Test cap.

Sometimes the gap between a historic debut and a forgotten career is not a decade, or even a season.

For Salil Ankola, it was one Test.