Duleep Trophy: Musheer masterclass on forgettable day for batters

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Kolkata: There were no points to be won, but definitely some slots up for grabs. The pitches weren’t ready to be bedded in, neither were the seamers forgiving. Red ball cricket without an international audience but under the cast of the selectors’ watchful eyes, there couldn’t have been a better time to brush up the old batting manual. The gist of the first day of a star-studded Duleep Trophy though makes for dismal reading.

Twenty-one wickets fell at Bengaluru and Anantapur for just 457 runs, with the top five found searching for a collective touch at both venues. Barring Musheer Khan though, all of 19, gritting his way to an instructional hundred on a day only one out of 14 top-five wickets to fall could cross 20. That, and Axar Patel’s 86 at Anantapur meant the scorecards weren’t entirely depressing.

But the boxes weren’t ticked too. Shreyas Iyer’s innings was cut short due to a beauty from Vijaykumar Vyshak but Devdutt Padikkal was guilty of throwing his bat at a wide ball just four balls into his stay while later in the day, Rajat Patidar was bowled by Axar Patel.

Seven down in the first session, India D risked getting bundled out for less than a hundred. But Patel reacted to the crisis with a mix of calm and aggression, seeing off the more difficult bowlers before slowly turning the tide with six fours and six sixes, scoring 86 in 118 balls. An 84-run ninth-wicket partnership with Arshdeep Singh allowed India D to cross the 150-run mark before Patel became the last man to be dismissed. India C responded to their opponents’ collapse in kind, losing four wickets in 18 overs before Bengal wicketkeeper Abhishek Porel (32) got together with Baba Indrajith (15) to stitch an unbeaten 48-run stand, the second highest partnership of the day.

A similar story of horrors unfolded at Bengaluru. Yashasvi Jaiswal threw away a well-grafted 30 after steering Khaleel Ahmed to point, Sarfaraz Khan (Musheer’s elder brother) was trapped leg-before not reading Avesh Khan’s in-dipper and Nitish Reddy was bowled by a beauty from Akash Deep that pitched and straightened to take the top of his off-stump. So predictable was the approach from Rishabh Pant on top of all of this that it didn’t feel like his first red-ball appearance in nearly two years.

Standing more than a foot outside the crease, Pant drove Avesh first ball through the covers for the easiest of fours. Next ball, from round the wicket and Pant was again trying to needle the gap. Third ball, skipped down the crease, wild heave, miss. Then, a solid front foot defence. Everything screamed that Pant hadn’t stopped being Pant. Till he expectedly speared the ball and was brilliantly caught by Shubman Gill running back from mid-off. All this when the innings was in desperate need of a partnership, not to forget Pant too would have been well served to use a few more balls to shake off the long-format rust.

Musheer did though, leaving balls, biding his time, digging in deeper while wickets fell around him. It wasn’t a chanceless innings by any stretch, but exemplary was the way he kept a high price tag on his wicket.

“I wanted to play as many balls as possible without thinking too much about runs,” Musheer said at the post-day press interaction. “I wanted to bat the whole day, and I was taking it session by session. The ball was swinging and cutting when I came to bat. So, I was trying to play the ball as close to my body as possible, and was looking to avoid those risky shots. I knew runs would eventually come,” he said.

Six runs in 52 balls in the first session, 44 off 72 in the second and 55 off 103 balls in the third—the progression of Musheer innings alone displays maturity beyond his years. And the fact that half of Musheer’s runs came in boundaries spoke of a mindset where survival in red-ball cricket isn’t merely about defence but the ability to wait for the loose ball. Bind it all together and you have a fine 227-ball 105 without which India A would have been undoubtedly poorer. None of this would have been possible without the dogged 74-ball vigil of Navdeep Saini who presented his bat and body to keep out the ball as Musheer slowly dragged his team out of the ruins. A few more of those and India A could well post a score that would bury the implosion Musheer helped them survive.

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