Duleep Trophy 2016: Abhinav Mukund stands tall among the ruins

The pink ball made its long-awaited debut in the 2016/17 edition of the Duleep Trophy. The first match was played at the Greater Noida Sports Complex which plays home to the Afghanistan cricket team. While most expected the pink ball to be a blessing, it was anything but for the batsmen as they simply could not face the swing of the bowlers on what was a lush green wicket.

Abhinav Mukund was perhaps the only batsman who could withstand the onslaught of the India Green bowlers as 11 wickets fell in the first two sessions of the first day of the first Duleep Trophy encounter.

Impressing the most was perhaps India Green pacer Sandeep Sharma who concluded with figures of 4/62. KS Bharath, Sudip Chatterjee, Kuldeep Yadav and Anureet Singh were among the youngster’s scalps as a call-up to the Indian cricket team looms over the horizon. Six of the seven top order batsmen failed to get past the 10-run mark in a sorry looking scorecard.

Yuvraj Singh, the charismatic all-rounder also failed to make a mark with the bat as he was dismissed early on in the first session for just 4 runs. However, he must be shielded from flak as he is playing with the pink ball for the first time in his long and illustrious career.

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Robin Uthappa was perhaps the only batsman to be dismissed for India Green as Nathu Singh claimed the scalp with a wonderfully curving inswinger. At the dinner break, India Green find themselves trailing by 149 runs.

Brief Scores:

India Red – 161 all out (A Mukund 77; S Sharma 4/62)

India Green – 12/1 (N Singh 1/4)