Hrithik Shokeen took his first five-for during the Ranji Trophy match at Palam on Tuesday. Delhi secured three points after enforcing a follow-on against Gujarat. While coach Monty Desai focused on training Vedant Trivedi in the nets, Shokeen showed great consistency. "The earlier you judge, the harder you must go."
Thank you for your feedback.
Your feedback has been reported succesfully.
Just as his lower-order pair returned to stave off the Delhi bowlers after lunch on Tuesday, Gujarat head coach Monty Desai had already turned his focus away from the play. Mid-session, he was in the nets with young Vedant Trivedi, who had cracked a century on debut last week and then failed here on a dormant strip.
The result at Air Force Ground B was a foregone conclusion even as Desai's trusted lieutenants, skipper Chintan Gaja and Manan Hingrajia, walked out in the morning, having neutralised the hosts with a stern partnership the previous evening. From their overnight 363/5 they still needed 286 for the decisive first-innings lead on day four of this second-round Ranji Trophy match. Hingrajia's resistance broke within the first 45 minutes, after nearly eight hours at the crease, and Gaja fell on 82, short of his maiden hundred, a little later. Desai turned to the more important task at hand.
Varying his pace on his loopy off-breaks, Desai tried to fine-tune Trivedi's judgement of lengths on deliveries that rose above his eyeline. "The earlier you judge, the harder you must go," he said. Not long before, out in the middle, Hingrajia's painstaking rearguard, 303 balls long, had been broken by a tossed-up delivery much like the ones Desai was bowling in the nets. Off-spinner Hrithik Shokeen's persistence finally trumped Hingrajia, who had erased an entire day from the match.
Five minutes after lunch, Shokeen dismissed Harshal Patel, leaving Delhi a wicket away from securing the innings lead. Desai didn't turn, his eyes fixed on Vedant's forward stride. Shokeen, however, would replay that moment in his head again.
A five-wicket haul had eluded the finger spinner in seven years as a professional. On a wicket where bowlers from both sides stood bereft of viable plans, Shokeen's five-for came from improved consistency across 53 overs.
Delhi had sifted through three new balls and 174 overs, but they were comfortable having another crack with the ball despite the workload. They enforced the follow-on, and the teams played on until the handshakes at tea. The three points gave Delhi some recovery after losing to Bengal in the first round. Big hundreds from Ayush Badoni and opener Priyansh Arya set up the game, but for a fledgling Delhi side, Shokeen's fortitude was the single key takeaway from Palam's paata.
Shokeen said the surface "wasn't the toughest pitch" to bowl on. "But yes, it was a hard-working wicket for us. Of course, it's a five-wicket haul, so it's very special," he said.
Shokeen made his T20 debut in the IPL for Mumbai Indians in 2022. With the arrival of the Impact Player rule and the shrinking role of the finger spinner, his career in the format stalled within a season.
He played only two Ranji matches last season and 10 professional matches in the last 22 months. Shokeen does not blame a lack of faith from the Delhi management. A stress fracture, uncommon for a spinner, curtailed his season, but the setback led to important tweaks in his bowling stride.
"I got injured after the 50-over games last year. I had a stress fracture in my back. My physio also told me that it was an unusual injury for a spinner to have a stress fracture in the back.
"But because of that, I worked a lot on my actions with the help of Vijay [Dahiya] sir. I worked a lot on my bowling line-up and follow-through. So because of that, I have gotten better," Shokeen told reporters.
Two gruelling days in the field ended with a reward for Shokeen (53-11-143-5) and for Ben Treloar, the Australian umpire who flew in for two Ranji Trophy games as part of an international exchange program.
The curtains were drawn soon after pacer Divij Mehra's delivery thudded low into Gujarat opener Aarya Desai's pads. After four days of quiet resignation to the batters' wont, Treloar could finally raise his finger for an LBW shout, an achievement in itself on a mulish pitch.
Brief scores: Delhi 648/8 declared in 120 overs drew with Gujarat 479 in 174.1 overs (Manan Hingrajia 123, Chintan Gaja 82; Hrithik Shokeen 5/143) and 15/1. Points: Delhi 3, Gujarat 1.