It was a mere trundle, and a nice smooth release of the ball. It pitched just outside the off stump around good length, it did not seam, did not shape much yet did just enough to compliment the bounce and took the outside edge of Rohit Sharma’s bat. Rohit was a tad lethargic in his feet movement but that takes nothing away from the delivery. A few minutes later Shikhar Dhawan was beaten all ends up by a fuller length delivery that once again moved to perfection to sneak through gap between bat and pad.
Unlike Rohit, Dhawan was guilty of playing a flashy shot that wasn’t on. India’s two famed white-ball openers were dismissed. This is not the scene of an ODI or a T20I on a green track. In fact, it didn’t happen in a match at all, let alone an international one. Rohit and Dhawan were left fetching for answers in a net session ahead of the first T20I against Bangladesh. And the bowler was a 19-year-old Delhi cricketer, it was his claim to fame. He looked slightly lost, slightly in awe, but, well, in cricketing terms, he had made his presence felt.
Right-arm medium pacer Keshav Dabas dismissed Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan – still considered to be a task at least in white-ball cricket – in quick succession. Keshav, for his part, didn’t even known how to react to it. He raised his right-arm for a brief period after finding the outside edge of Rohit’s bat but brought it down immediately as if he wished to undone everything. Like a true senior pro, Rohit picked up the ball and threw it back towards Keshav, something which he doesn’t do that often.
That did very little to inject courage of a mild celebration in Keshav. When he castled Dhawan, he just walked back quietly after picking up the ball.
“It’s a great feeling… Ab kya bolu samajh nei aa raha,” Keshav told Hindustan Times later.
