Bhuvanesh - Who ??

Bhuvanesh – Who  ?????

– circulated to my group on  13^th Jan 2009 and posted now ! (He bowled for Pune Warriors at Chepuak and milked 37 runs in 3)

Once India was a land of spinners – we had Subash Gupte, the famed quartet of Bishan Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna, Srinivasan Venkatraghavan, & Bhagwat Chandrasekhar; then came Dilip Doshi, Shivlal Yadav, followed by the likes of Anil Kumble, Harbhajan and…..

Kapil Dev a class apart, Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad, Karsan Ghavri, Madanlal played for long.  The recent times have seen new ball attack of : Zaheer, Nehra, Pathan, Ishant, Sreeshant, Praveenkumar – ser iously challenged by bunch of youngsters  :  Umesh Yadav , Vinay Kumar, Varun Aaron, Abhimanyu Mithun, Ashok Dinda, Jaidev Unakdat; then there have been some  nippy fast bowlers and some swing bowlers  who came along but never made their marks which would include   Yograj Singh,  Chetan Sharma, Raju Kulkarni, Rajinder Singh Ghai, TA Sekhar, Vivek Razdan,  Bharat Arun, Subrata Bannerjee, AW Zaidi,  Rudra Pratap Singh, Doda Ganesh

Dear (s)

The Ranji Finals is on and not many would have heard Bhuvanesh Kumar and some about Ranji Trophy.  Here is something on the country’s premier domestic cricket tournament.  There were times when everything, a call to National duty,  depended upon one’s performance in this tournament and hence would have attracted everybody’s attention.  Today it certainly does not have that glitz and attraction.  A 18 yr old young lad was on a song at Hyderabad in the Finals between the much famed Mumbai and underdogs UP.  Mumbai eventually finaished at 402 and this landed with dream figures of 5 for 78 which included prize scalps.  Before we proceed, here is something on Ranji Trophy.

The Ranji Trophy is a domestic first-class cricket championship played in India  equivalent to the County Championship in England and the Sheffield Shield in Australia. The competition is named after Kumar Ranjitsinhji -Jam Sahib of Nawanagar, an Indian prince and Test cricketer who played for the English cricket team.  Most of the teams playing in the Ranji Trophy represent states of India. However, there are teams that represent individual cities such as Mumbai or Hyderabad. The competition also includes teams that have no regional affiliations, such as Railways and Services. This competition was launched way back in 1934 with the trophy donated by the Maharaja of Patiala.  

Mumbai has been the most dominant team so far with 37 wins. Long till 2002-03 season, the teams were grouped into five zones - North, West, East, Central and South - and initial matches were played within the zones on a league basis. The top teams from each zone played in a national knock-out competition, leading to a final which decided the winner of the tournament.  Then the Zonal system was abandoned and a two tire structure of Elite and Plate Group was launched.  Now it stands relabelled as Super League and Plate League. 

In the Semi finals this year, UP defeated Tamilnadu and Mumbai defeated Saurashtra.  UP is facing a star studded Mumbai team at a neutral Hyderabad now.  Against the much fancied Mumbai, UP has won the trophy only once during 2005-06 when they beat Bengal.  In the last edition of the Ranji, UP was trounced by Delhi s led by Virender Sehwag. It was not the famed line up that took the cricketing circles by storm but Bhuvnesh Kumar who was not even born when Sachin made his Test debut.  He produced a dream spell to plunge the Champions into crisis.  He struck the first blow trapping Jaffer in front and then makeshift opener Vinayak Samant in similar fashion with late inswing.

Amidst loud cheers, in walked the maestro – the highest scorer in both ODI & Tests and also the batsmen with most centuries in both forms of cricket.   But, Bhuvneshwar was in no mood to leave the centre-stage. Bowling his heart out and with a near-perfect line and length, he induced Tendulkar to lean forward to one that swung back only to take an inside edge to lob on to onside where an alert Shivakant Shukla ran from short mid-wicket and dived forward to complete a smart catch ending the maestro’s 15-ball stay at the wicket. A dismissal which expectedly triggered off long celebrations in the U.P. camp as this has  scripted a piece of history being the first duck for the little master in Indian domestic cricket.  Bhuvanesh finished with figures of 5 for 78 and Mumbai eventually finished at 402 and when news last came in, UP were reeling under pressure. 

With regards’ – S Sampathkumar