Remembering Piyush Pandey — An Indian advertising legend who was also a gutsy cricketer

An advertising genius, a storyteller, a man of wits: Piyush Pandey wore many hats. But one side of him that often went unnoticed was that he was also a gutsy cricketer.

Though data would suggest that he featured in just five First-Class matches for Rajasthan, scoring a mere 105 runs, what few would remember is that he captained a few India internationals during his college days.

One of them was Arun Lal.

“He was my captain at the St. Stephen’s College in New Delhi. And I must say, he was a damn good cricketer. As a captain, he was no-nonsense, but he was a man full of heart,” Lal told Sportstar.

“Back in those days, the inter-college tournaments were just like Test cricket, where colleges in Delhi would be shut when St. Stephen’s and Hindu College had a match, and I remember, we won the title under the captaincy of Piyush.”

Back then, of course, neither Lal nor Piyush imagined that paths would go in different directions: Lal broke into the Delhi Ranji Trophy team and eventually played for India while Piyush took Indian advertising to greater heights.

“He valued people, their stories and trusted them genuinely. He would have been a much more successful cricketer had he been a bit more serious, like I was. But for him, there was no room for statistics or numbers, it was about people and their stories. Cricket’s loss was certainly advertising’s gain,” Lal, who played for India in 16 Tests and 13 ODIs, said.

Lal and Piyush had remained ‘friends for life’. “It’s difficult to believe that he is no more,” Lal said.

Piyush led the Rajasthan U-23 team, also playing under Kailash Gattani in the Ranji Trophy.

“Back in those days, we had several top-order batters, but we did not have enough wicketkeepers, and when Piyush came into the set-up, it solved our problems. He was a fairly decent wicketkeeper, who could also chip in with the bat, and that helped the team combination,” Gattani said.

“He was a good team man, and when I requested him to keep the wickets, he happily agreed and he did reasonably well. Being a top-order batter, he would provide steady starts and that offered some room for the middle-order batters. He was a thorough team-man,” Gattani reminisced. “He never threw away his wickets…”

“When he moved to advertising, we weren’t surprised, because he was always witty, and very creative with his thoughts and ideas,” Suresh Shastri, another Rajasthan cricket stalwart, remembers.

“He was a happy-go-lucky young man. While he did not play for long, he ensured that he made friends for life.”

Despite his busy schedule, Piyush made it a point to be in touch with his teammates – from age-group to First-Class cricket – and every time he was in Jaipur, the old friends would meet and reminisce about the good old cricketing days.

Mahesh Sharma, a former First-Class cricketer, was Piyush’s neighbour in Jaipur. “We knew each other since childhood, and we both went to the same school (St. Xavier’s). Even though he was a few years junior to me, he was passionate about cricket and played for the school team,” Sharma said.

“But his real interest was in story-telling and humour. He knew that he had to take those stories to the world and he eventually did it with his craft… But having said that, he was a pretty decent wicketkeeper-batter, and had he been a bit more serious about the game, he would have continued longer…”

Taposh Chatterjee, who is now a noted pitch curator, also played under Piyush’s captaincy for Rajasthan U-23, along with Amrit Mathur, a former cricketer, an administrator and now a cricket columnist.

Taposh remembers Piyush as a ‘gutsy cricketer, who put the game first’.

According to Taposh, he knew how to bring the best out of the players,who could walk up to him with any problems, knowing that an ‘elder brother’ would try his best to address their issues.

That made Piyush who he was.

Throughout his career, he made brands immortal, but his wit, humour and love for cricket will forever be cherished by his friends and colleagues, who would wait for that phone call, saying, “ Yaar, kab mil na hai batao… (Let me know when you want to meet)”

Published on Oct 24, 2025