Kolkata: For a stretch of five overs on Tuesday afternoon, something surreal unfolded at the Chepauk stadium.
From one end bowled Mohammed Shami, 36 and still capable of making a cricket ball behave in ways batters would rather it did not. From the other end was Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, 15 and whose cricket education is still in its earliest chapters. For five overs either side of tea on Day 3, the veteran and the prodigy bowled in tandem, a 21-year age gap compressed into the same spell of a Duleep Trophy final.
Not just unusual, this was a pairing rarely seen in cricket at any stage. In 1990, a 17-year-old Sachin Tendulkar had first bowled in an ODI at Nottingham, with Kapil Dev, then 31, the most senior bowler in the attack. That was a 14-year gap between India’s youngest and oldest bowlers. At Chepauk, the gulf was seven years wider.
There was an appealing simplicity to the picture. Shami, with the accumulated knowledge of hundreds of matches, seemed to be conducting an examination. Sooryavanshi, having just begun writing his own cricketing history, quietly slipped in some overs to force the struggling South Zone to think outside the box.
Those three overs cost Sooryavanshi only eight runs. Shami’s experience was more obvious in the numbers at the end of the day—11 overs, four maidens, 17 runs and two wickets. Yet, the significance of the five overs they shared was not measured by economy rates. It was a glimpse of cricket’s continuum, with one generation passing through the same contest as another begins to make its mark.
They could also afford it, given how East Zone have placed themselves in this match. Having amassed a colossal 708, they spent the next phase of the game steadily dismantling South Zone’s response. South reached 242/6 at stumps, still 466 runs behind. The wickets did not arrive in a dramatic cluster. Instead, East Zone applied pressure patiently, allowing South’s batsmen to make the mistakes.
Opener Narayan Jagadeesan’s dismissal was the first clear example. Having made 32, he reached away from his body facing Shikhar Mohan’s left-arm spin and sliced the ball to backward point. Mohan had only been introduced because allrounder Anukul Roy, who also bowls left-arm spin, was off the field with a finger injury. This unexpected opportunity produced Mohan’s maiden first-class wicket.
Devdutt Padikkal, after making 62 from 104 balls, followed in an even more frustrating fashion. A perfectly respectable delivery from Mukesh Kumar was flicked majestically – and straight to deep square leg. Padikkal knew immediately what he had done, and walked away with a wry smile and a hand on his helmet.
Shami had in the previous over produced the breakthrough that helped turn pressure into authority. The young Shaik Rasheed (27) had added 56 runs with Padikkal when he was trapped leg before by one that nipped back at 134.8kph. Shami later returned for a short spell and removed Ravichandran Smaran with an excellent delivery that induced a thin edge. Kumar Kushagra persistently urging a review of the original not-out decision proved decisive.
Mukesh had foxed Padikkal by taking the pace off to force him to mistime for his second wicket while Shami’s spell demonstrated that the ball could still reverse after 35-odd overs, something Rasheed discovered to his dismay.
Skipper Tilak Varma remained unbeaten on 56, but South’s batting has been punctuated by starts wasted. With East’s total still in the distance, South will require something extraordinary simply to make the final even remotely competitive.
Brief scores: East Zone 708. South Zone 242/6 in 80 overs (D Padikkal 62, T Varma 56*, N Jagadeesan 32; M Shami 2/17, M Kumar 2/36).
