While the Indian seniors have failed miserably with the bats in England, most of the A team batsmen have done well with the willow at the four-nation Emerging Players Tournament which concluded in Queensland on Saturday.
Published: Aug 14, 2011, 07:04 PM (IST)
Edited: Aug 14, 2011, 07:04 PM (IST)
Manoj Tiwary in action against AIS in Emerging players tournament © Getty Images
New Delhi: Aug 14, 2011
While the Indian seniors have failed miserably with the bats in England, most of the A team batsmen have done well with the willow at the four-nation Emerging Players Tournament which concluded in Queensland on Saturday.
Bengal’s Manoj Tiwary and talented Mumbai batsman Ajinkya Rahane were star performers having scored 306 and 274 runs respectively. Skipper Shikhar Dhawan scored 205 runs.
Barring Aniruddha Srikkanth, whose selection came under lot of criticism, almost all the other top-order Indian batsmen who atleast got an innings to showcase their skills got a half century.
While Manoj (average 76.50) hit a century and a half century, Rahane (average 68.50) hit two centuries. Skipper Shikhar Dhawan, Saurabh Tiwary and young Ashok Menaria scored a century each while Manish Pandey hit two half centuries and Ambati Rayudu also scored a half century.
Aniruddha was the only specialist batsman who failed to notch up a double digit score (9 and 8) in the two innings he got during the only three-day match.
Srikkanth Junior’s performance was a shade better in T20s where he scored 81 runs in three matches but his strike-rate of shade over 114 was nowhere close to the two Tiwarys — Manoj (88 runs; strike-rate 154.38) and Saurabh (103 runs; strike-rate 151.47).
In the bowling department, Varun Aaron had the most number scalps (10) in three day matches followed by Iqbal Abdullah and R Vinay Kumar (9 each). Abdullah was the most successful bowler in the shortest version with six sticks to his credit.(PTI)
