Vikram Solanki

Vikram Singh Solanki (born 1 April 1976) is a former Indian-born English cricketer, who played county cricket for Surrey having previously spent 17 years at Worcestershire. In 2007, he became the 24th Worcestershire batsman to pass 10,000 career runs for the county. He also captained Worcestershire from 2005 to 2010, before resigning mid-season. He also played over 50 One Day Internationals for his country as a batsman and occasional off-spinner. In September 2015 he announced his retirement as a player.

Early life and career

Solanki was born in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India, but moved to Wolverhampton with his family at the age of eight. Solanki played junior and senior cricket for Wolverhampton cricket club and he made his first-class debut for Worcestershire in 1995, although he had played one-day cricket for the county two seasons earlier. In 1996 he was awarded the NBC Denis Compton Award. Although principally taken on by worcestestershire as a batsman, on his first class debut, due to there being no fit spinners available, he was selected to bowl his off breaks — something he had done with a degree of success the previous winter while on tour with England U19. Although generally an occasional bowler, Solanki produced a ten-wicket haul, five wickets in each innings, against Lancashire at Old Trafford in 1996. In 1999 he achieved a batting average of over 40, something he repeated in 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006. 2006 was also the first season since 2000 in which he managed to top 1,000 first-class runs, making 1,252.