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'Backbone of Indian pace bowling' - Cricket fraternity wishes Venkatesh Prasad on 54th birthday

Former India pacer Venkatesh Prasad played for his national side from 1996 to 2001. He has turned 54 years old.

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Rohit Kumar
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'Backbone of Indian pace bowling' - Cricket fraternity wishes Venkatesh Prasad on 54th birthday

Venkatesh Prasad with Javagal Srinath (Image Credit: Twitter)

Former India cricketer Venkatesh Prasad has turned 54 years old. He was born on August 5, 1969 in Bangalore. Talking about his cricket career, he made his ODI debut in 1994 against New Zealand. This was the same series in which legendary Sachin Tendulkar started to open the batting. Meanwhile, in the 161 ODI games played by Prasad, he has 196 wickets including the best figures of 27/5 against Pakistan in the 1999 World Cup.

In 1996, the right-arm pacer made his Test debut. In 33 games, he has 96 wickets. Prasad made his First Class debut in 1990 and played his last in 2003. In this period, he played 123 games and grabbed 361 scalps. Apart from this, in 236 List A games, he picked 295 wickets from 1991 to 2003. After his cricket career got over, he played many roles in Indian cricket.

He worked as head coach of Royal Challengers Bangalore in 2008. The team finished seventh out of eight teams, only above Deccan Chargers (now defunct). The team was led by Rahul Dravid and had superstars such as Mark Boucher, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Wasim Jaffer, Misbah-ul-Haq, Ross Taylor, Jacques Kallis, Anil Kumble, Dale Steyn, Nathan Bracken, etc.

Venkatesh Prasad's five controversies that surrounded him

During the Border-Gavaskar Trophy early this year, he wasn't particularly pleased with KL Rahul's inclusion in the playing XI as the latter wasn't performing at all. The former RCB head coach even had a Twitter war with former India opening batter Aakash Chopra.

In 2019, he was accused of a conflict of interest when it was revealed that while working as Indian Cricket Board's junior chief selector, he was running his own academy.

Four years before this, the 54-year-old was forced to apologize for calling women's cricket as exciting as men's cricket.

In the year 2000 when match-fixing was being unearthed around the globe, Venkatesh was alleged to be involved. However, he was cleared as it was never proven.

In 2002, Prasad was fined for verbally abusing an on-field umpire during a game against England.

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Venkatesh Prasad