The young middle order batter of the Mumbai side and the future star of Indian cricket, Musheer Khan, put up a record in the partnership of 205 runs for the eighth wicket with the fast bowler of the side Navdeep Saini and helped the India B side in getting rescued from the struggling situation during their opening game against India A at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru.
India A started quite brilliantly with the bat with a decent 33-run opening partnership but couldn’t get going after the first hour of the game. In the first 40 minutes post the lunch break, they kept on losing wickets consistently and found themselves at 94/7 in 43.5 overs.
Musheer Khan was still in the middle but needed some sort of help from one of his partners to stand them in the middle and put a much-needed partnership to steady their progress during the game.
Musheer Khan-Navdeep Saini breaks 14-year-old record held by Indian coaches
One of the brightest aspects of the partnership between Musheer Khan and Saini was how easily they were managing the runs. At the start of the stand, the former was looked to play the most deliveries and giving the last couple of balls to the pacer towards the end of the over.
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The lanky fast bowler was also very good at defending the short and wide balls, which was the key part of the stand. Towards the end of the day, when the India A bowlers got tired, the 19-year-old batter decided to take on the aggressive mode and smash the bowlers to all parts of the ground.
Saini started to get confidence in his batting, which allowed Musheer to give more chances to his partner with the bat in hand. In their whole process, the India A side also helped them in the tactical prospect, as they kept the field set-up open against Musheer Khan even at the start of the new day’s play, which was quite a peculiar decision from captain Shubman Gill.
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Both of them grew in confidence and kept on hacking the bowlers in all parts of the park on the second day. Finally, Musheer Khan was dismissed on 181 runs, shouldered on 16 boundaries and five sixes at a strike rate of 48. This ends the 204-run partnership between the two batters for the eighth wicket, which broke the 197-run stand for the same wicket between the two former coaches, Ramesh Pawar and Abhishek Nayar, which came in 2010 for West Zone against North Zone in Rajkot.
The game was drawn, and the WZ side earned the victory based on their first innings lead. In this case, the India B side managed 205 runs together, where Saini was the last to go in the innings after he made 56 runs in 144 balls, shouldering on eight boundaries and one six. It was a commendable position from the Abhimanyu Easwaran-led side, as they ended with 321 runs in their first innings despite being 94/7 in the middle half of the opening day.