It was one of those days for Shahbaz Nadeem where he made a defining impact for his team in the domestic circuit again. The 30-year old left arm spinner bowled a match winning spell in the Deodhar Trophy final to guide India B to the title.
India B batted first and although, they couldn’t get off to a great start, Kedar Jadhav held the innings together with a couple of decent partnerships in the middle overs.
Despite Kedar’s innings though, it didn’t seem at one point of time that India B would get to a par score. However, Krishnappa Gowtham and Vijay Shankar, with a flurry of strokes to all corners of the ground towards the end of the innings, got India B to 283.
The youngster Ishan Porel was the pick of the bowlers for India C as he finished with the figures of 43/5.
Even though India C had a powerful batting line-up, 283 was a tricky total on that pitch as it was offering a little bit of grip and turn to the spinners.
It was a surface tailor-made for somebody like Nadeem and the southpaw thrived on it. He varied his pace nicely and gave the India C batters nothing to work with.
He was accurate, on the stumps and with one ball turning, another one going straight with the arm, he proved to be extremely difficult to handle.
Priyam Garg, Axar Patel and Jalaj Saxena were the three batsmen from India C who showed some resilience, but their efforts weren’t enough as India C remained 52 runs short of the target eventually.
Nadeem removed Mayank Agarwal, Dinesh Karthik and Suryakumar Yadav, three key batsman of the India C line-up, before completing his 4-fer with the wicket of Mayank Markande lower down the order.
Nadeem has been toiling hard in the domestic circuit for years, but he hasn’t got the opportunity to play as many games for India as he should have, despite the numbers he has produced in the domestic circuit.
He recently made his international debut as he was called up for the Ranchi test match against South Africa because of Kuldeep Yadav’s shoulder niggle. However, as Kuldeep got back into the Indian squad for the Bangladesh series after regaining 100% fitness, Nadeem was left out again.
Match Summary:
India B: 283/7 (Kedar Jadhav 86 (94), Vijay Shankar 45 (33), Krishnappa Gowtham 35 (10), Ishan Porel 43/5)
India C: 232/9 (Priyam Garg 74 (77), Axar Patel 38 (49), Jajaj Saxena 37 (65), Shahbaz Nadeem 32/4)
