Pujara To Lead Rest of India in Irani Cup
By Indian Cricket Fever
January 19 2017
Pujara leads a strong Rest of India team against Gujarat starting tomorrow January 20th at Cricket Club of India's venerable Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai. Recently the Rest of India has done really well against the Ranji Champions with the Rest winning 9 out of the previous 11 ocassions. This time too the pattern is likely to be the same. The match also has some added interest as the one-off Test against Bangladesh and the four Test series against Australia is coming up soon. A good performance here will definitely catch the selectors' eye in case any slots open up in the Test team, either from injury or lack of form.
The following players have been selected for the Rest of India team to play against Gujarat, the Paytm Ranji Trophy 2016-17 Champions at the Cricket Club of India, Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai from Jan 20-24, 2017.
Rest of India (RoI) Team: Abhinav Mukund, Akhil Herwadkar, Cheteshwar Pujara (captain), Karun Nair, Manoj Tiwary, Wriddhiman Saha, Kuldeep Yadav, Shahbaz Nadeem, Pankaj Singh, K Vignesh, Siddarth Kaul, Shardul Thakur, Akshay Wakhare, Ishan Kishan, Prashant Chopra
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017:02:03:18:53:58 by Birbal.
300-8 after first day is pretty even...though I give edge to RoI due to their strong batting line up and Gujarat's weakish bowling... And Guj would have been nowhere near that score without a very key innings by Chirag Gandhi... especially after Priyank Panchal and Parthiv Patel both were dismissed cheaply...
Btw, the umpiring has been quite poor, Parthiv got a real HOWLER... given out caught when bat was NOWHERE near the ball... As he walked back the stump mic caught him saying in a disgusted and resigned tone...to the Ump...."Umpiring Kyon Karte Hon?"...
He later said he wasn't aware that the mic. would pic it up... and in no way was it abusive, though it was definitely expressing his dissent... He may yet get pulled up and fined...but it would be unfair... Are cricketers supposed to be non-human robots who have no emotions or feel no disappointment when they are wronged so badly...?
If DRS was implemented in Ranji and Irani... the standard of umpiring would improve... but then it does cost quite a bit... and who will bear expense?
This is what healthy competition does... well done Saha...
But the match is not over yet... Gujarat can still pull off a win... though now RoI is in drivers seat...
The quickly swinging fortunes of the teams made this an exciting match... I was however very disappointed at the poor catching, especially of the RoI and the pretty ordinary pace bowling on a lively wicket... the quickest bowler was the rookie Siraj who got into the mid 130s... but rest were barely 120-125 kmph pace...
Gujarat bowling was just too inexperienced... and though they fought hard... in the end the class of Pujara and Saha was too much...
Of course the HOWLER against Parthiv Patel played its part...but can't blame loss on that one alone...