Madhya Pradesh pacer Arshad Khan, who played for Gujarat in IPL, wreaked havoc. (File photo)Image Credit source: PTI
On one hand, the excitement of international cricket continues between India and South Africa, while on the other hand, amazing action is being seen in domestic cricket as well. Although batsmen like Abhishek Sharma, Vaibhav Suryavanshi, Prithvi Shaw are garnering more discussions, but a fast bowler wreaked such havoc with his edge and speed that one by one the batsmen collapsed towards the cards. This feat was done by fast bowler Arshad Khan, on the basis of which Madhya Pradesh registered an easy victory in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.
On Saturday 6th December, Madhya Pradesh faced Chandigarh in the Elite Group B match at Jadavpur University Complex ground in Kolkata. Chandigarh batted first in this match but left-arm pacer Arshad Khan destroyed its top order. In the first 4 overs, he lost 3 wickets for only 16 runs and all three wickets were taken by Arshad Khan.
But Arshad was not satisfied with just this and came in the 19th over and again wreaked havoc. Arshad, who played for Gujarat Titans in IPL, took 3 wickets in this over itself. He dismissed Gaurav Puri on the first ball and Sanyam Saini on the fourth. Along with this, he did the feat of taking 5 wickets in an innings for the first time in T20 cricket. Then he ended this over with another wicket, which was his sixth victim.
Overall, Arshad Khan took 6 wickets in his spell of 4 overs. As special as this was in itself, his stinginess was equally special. Arshad, who gave away runs at an expensive economy rate of 9.59 in his T20 career, spent only 9 runs in 24 balls in this innings. That means he gave runs in this match at the rate of only 2.25 and also took 6 wickets.
It was natural for Arshad’s amazing bowling to have an impact on the outcome of the match. Chandigarh team could score only 134 runs after losing 8 wickets in 20 overs. For that, Manan Vohra played an inning of 52 runs and Sanyam Saini played an inning of 33 runs. In response, Madhya Pradesh scored 135 runs in just 14 overs and won by 7 wickets. For MP, Harsh Gawli played an unbeaten inning of 74 runs in 40 balls, while Harpreet Singh also scored 48 runs.