B. Vijayakrishna

Bharanaiah Vijayakrishna (12 October 1949 – 17 June 2021) was an Indian cricketer who played for Karnataka. In his fifteen-year career as a left arm spinner and a left handed batsman, he played 80 first class matches in which he scored over 2000 runs and took 194 wickets.

Career

Early in his career, Vijayakrishna was encouraged by K. Nagabhushan, a Karnataka cricketer from the late 1960s, who made him bowl with a tennis ball in a car shed. He took three wickets against Hyderabad on his Ranji debut in 1968–69 and six against Madras in the next match. But his career was often interrupted by the presence of the national level spinners B. S. Chandrasekhar and Erapalli Prasanna when they were available to play the Ranji Trophy. He was included in the fourteen for the South Zone team for the Duleep Trophy in 1969 but got his next chance only ten years later.

In the quarter-final against Rajasthan in 1971–72, Vijayakrishna scored 71* with a severe ankle injury. As he could not walk, he was carried all the way to the dressing room. His other first class hundred was scored against Bihar in 1977–78.

Against the 1978–79 West Indies team, he took 6/79 and 3/89 to help Karnataka to a famous win. Vijayakrishna retired after the Ranji final against Bombay in 1982–83. He had been part of all three of Karnataka's title wins till then.