Ranji trophy 14-15: Jharkhand vs Services

Match Summary: Services (230 & 235) lost to Jharkhand (387 & 84/1) by 9 wickets

Points: Jharkhand 6, Services 0

You wait the whole season for one victory and when the team is out of the race of the knock-outs, two of them them come in arow right at the fag end of the season.

Services could muster 230 in their first innings with the Jharkhand bowlers sharing the wickets around. A maiden century by Shiv Gautam anchored Jharkhand's innings taking them to a big first innings lead. In the second innings Services could only score 235 with Samar Quadri emerging the wrecker-in-chief. Jharkhand knocked off the meagre target of 84 for the loss of a single wicket. And they earned an extra day-off at the end of the season.

Highlights:

• Shiv Gautam's maiden first class century.
• Samar Quadri's 8 wicket match haul including 6 in the second innings.

Season Stats:

Top Scorers:

1. Ishank Jaggi 670 @74.44
2. Saurabh Tiwary 566 @51.45
3. Ishan Kishan 451 @41.00

Most Wickets: 

1. Samar Quadri 29 @24.45
2. Shahbaz Nadeem 28 @25.54
3. Rituraj Singh 20  @31.60

Points Tally - 21 points from 8 games. Final rank can be anywhere between 4 and 6 depending on the results of Kerala and Andhra games.

Season Notes

• Lots of inconsistency in the team selection with 20 players representing the team this season. 
• Jharkhand is the home team for MS Dhoni, hence the high turn-out of wicket-keeper batsmen in this season. In all 4 keepers were used. In the last game against Services, there were 3 of them in the line-up occupying the top 3 slots as well.
• The captaincy changed mid-season with Kumar Deobrat taking over from Saurabh Tiwary who resigned to concentrate on his batting. Tiwary scored 3 centuries justifying his decision, while Deobrat's form took a nose-dive.
• Lots of youngsters were tried. The likes of Ishan Kishan, Virat Singh, Prakash Munda, Sumit Kumar got their first taste of first class cricket. Some of them certainly showed enough signs of a potentially good future. Lets see what they have in store for us in the coming season.
• Batting was mostly inconsistent though Ishank Jaggi returned to form with 2 double centuries. However all of them did not perform together as as a team except in one game.
• Bowling was managed by Nadeem, Quadri and new import Rituraj Singh. The return of Varun Aaron from international duty certainly bolstered the attack. 
• In all 2 wins, 1 loss, 5 draws with only one innings lead. Certainly more was needed. So we stay in Group C for next year as well.

Coming Up Next - Syed Mustaq Ali Trophy