Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, 2021: Day 1 – Raina's unbeaten fifty in a defeat, Nagwaswalla's record haul and more stats

Professional cricket finally resumed in India after a gap of nearly 10 months (more than 300 days) as the 2020-21 domestic season kicked off with the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy. A total of nine matches took place on the opening day of the tournament with three games each of the A, B and C groups. Sunday witnessed the comeback of Suresh Raina who was playing his first professional match since May 2019 and scored an unbeaten fifty albeit in a defeat. The last edition’s finalists, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu began with wins against Jammu & Kashmir and Jharkhand respectively.

Here are all the major statistical highlights from the opening day of the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy 2020-21:

2 – Suresh Raina ended up unbeaten in an unsuccessful chase for only the 2nd time in his Twenty20 career. He finished with 56* off 50 against Punjab while Uttar Pradesh was chasing 135 to win. The other such instance was during the 2008 IPL match against RCB. Raina ended up not out in a successful chase on 25 occasions with 24 of them coming in between the defeats noted above.

2 – The 2-run win against Hyderabad at the Eden Gardens is the narrowest win in terms of runs for Assam in the SMA T20 Trophy. It is also the joint-narrowest defeat in terms of runs for Hyderabad who also lost to Karnataka by 2 runs in 2018.

6/19 – Arzan Nagwaswalla of Gujarat became only the 3rd player to bag a 6-wicket haul in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy with his 6/17 against Maharashtra. Deepak Punia took 6/14 for Services against Haryana while Swapnil Singh also had figures of 6/19 for Baroda against Saurashtra; both coming in successive days in 2014-15 season.

6/19 – Nagwaswalla’s figures of 6/19 are now the joint 3rd best for any left-arm pacer in the history of Twenty20 cricket. Sohail Tanvir took 6/14 in the IPL 2008 game while Mohammad Amir 6/17 during BPL 2019-20. Earlier in the 2020 T20 Blast, Shaheen Shah Afridi also registered figures of 6/19.

8 – Arun Karthik bagged a duck in the game between Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand which was his 8th in the SMA T20 Trophy. Only Bipul Sharma (9) has more ducks than Arun in the history of the competition and is leveled on the 2nd spot with Pritam Das (8) and Unmukt Chand (8).

50 – The defeat against Karnataka was the 50th outright loss in Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy for Jammu & Kashmir which makes them the first team to lose 50 games in the history of the competition.

92* – The unbeaten 92 by C Hari Nishanth against Jharkhand is the 2nd highest individual score in the Twenty20 format for Tamil Nadu. The highest T20 score for Tamil Nadu came from the bat of Murali Vijay who made 107 against Meghalaya in the 2018-19 season.