On Thursday, a Goa batter achieved a feat that only a handful of cricketers in Ranji Trophy history have managed. Remarkably, this exclusive list does not include legends such as Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, or Virat Kohli. The milestone came in Goa’s season opener against Chandigarh at the Goa Cricket Association Academy Ground in Porvorim, where Abhinav Tejrana smashed a double century on his First-Class debut.
Batting at No. 3 for Goa, the 24-year-old, making his domestic cricket debut, reached the triple-figure mark on Day 1 of the match. He became the third batter to score a ton in a First-Class debut for Goa. Sachin’s son, Arjun, is part of the list, having achieved the feat in 2022, when he scored 120 against Rajasthan.
On Day 2, Abhinav added 70 more runs to his overnight score of an unbeaten 130 to notch up a record double century in 301 balls. He became the first batter from Goa to achieve this batting feat, and the 13th in the history of Ranji Trophy cricket, which includes the great Gundappa Viswanath and domestic cricket giant Amol Muzumdar. Jay Gohil was the last batter to get to the milestone, when he scored 227 off 246 for Saurashtra, in a match against Assam, where he replaced senior India batter Cheteshwar Pujara, who had missed the game owing to national team duty.
Other batters on that list include: Anshuman Pandey, Manprit Juneja, Jiwanjot Singh, Abhishek Gupta, Ajay Rohera, Mayank Raghav, Arslan Khan
Sakibul Gani, Pavan Shah, and Suved Parkar.
Tejrana scored 205 off 320 balls, laced with 21 fours and four boundaries, before his 309-run fourth-wicket partnership with Lalit Yadav ended, just one run shy of Goa’s record, previously held by Rahul Keni and Ajay Ratra.
Incidentally, Tejrana was not the only batter to enter the exclusive batting list on Thursday. Ayush Doseja also scored a double century on his First-Class debut for Delhi against Hyderabad at the NexGen Cricket Ground in Hyderabad.