On the one hand in Chennai, Ravichandran Ashwin was snarling the Bangladeshi batsmen with his spin bowling, while some four and a half kilometers away, the young left arm fast bowler Arshdeep Singh was wreaking havoc with his swing. Both the bowlers’ performances on Sunday yielded only one result – a win for their team. Team India defeated Bangladesh by 280 runs in Chennai, while Shreyas Iyer captained India D also defeated India B by a huge margin of 257 runs in the last round match of the Duleep Trophy. Arshdeep Singh was the star of the team’s win, bowling lethally and taking 6 wickets as did Ashwin, which also included big batsmen like Suryakumar Yadav and Abhimanyu Iswaran.
The last round of Duleep Trophy matches started on 19 September at the same time as the India-Bangladesh Test. On the final day of this match played in Anantapur, India D scored 305 runs in their second innings. That included Ricky Bhui’s brilliant century. He played an unbeaten innings of 119 runs off just 124 balls. India D also got a lead of 67 runs in the first innings. Thus 373 runs were needed to win in the remaining 2 sessions of the last day. Now it was looking difficult to get such a big score, in such a situation there was a strong possibility of a draw but Arshdeep Singh did not let that happen.
Surya also lost to Arshdeep
The left-arm fast bowler, who missed out on Team India for the second Test, teamed up with fellow fast bowler Aditya Thackeray to bowl out the entire team for 115 runs in just 23 overs. Both these bowlers bowled the entire 22.2 overs for India D. During this time, Arshdeep took the big wicket of India B captain and experienced batsman Abhimanyu Ishwar, who scored a century in the first innings, and boosted his team’s hopes of victory. Soon after that he also took the wicket of India’s T20 captain Surya (16). Surya, who is playing red-ball domestic cricket with hopes of returning to the Test team, has suffered a setback. He failed in both the stakes.
Wreaked havoc by taking 6 wickets
Arshdeep took 3 out of 5 wickets of India B’s top order and then returned the last 3 batsmen to the pavilion in 3 consecutive overs to give Team India a memorable win. Arshdeep took 6 wickets for 40 runs in 11.2 overs. On the other hand, young batsman Mushir Khan, who scored a century on his Duleep Trophy debut, has been going through a rough patch ever since and failed to open his account this time as well. Thackeray made him his prey, while Washington Sundar and Narayan Jagdeesan were also sent back to the pavilion by the Vidarbha fast bowler. Thackeray took 4 wickets in 11 overs. This was India D’s first win in the tournament and their last with 6 points.
