As the second test match was progressing towards a dull draw, one news-item barely made headlines yesterday - Nilesh Kulkarni retired from first-class cricket after playing for Mumbai the last 13 years.
He played in 3 test matches for India, bowled in 2 of them and took 2 wickets in his career after turning his arm over for 738 balls. That is real disturbing for him, especially considering the fact that he took his first wicket off the first ball of international cricket (He is the only Indian bowler to achieve this feat). In fact, he is part of a very elite list of 12 bowlers in the history of cricket.
Now, let us look at these two figures:
- 70-12-195-1
- 64-14-212-2
The second one is that of Suraj Randiv in his debut test, bowling against the Indian team scoring 669-9 (as of 4th day). He took the wickets of Sehwag and Dravid on the 3rd day of the match but later, has not been lucky as Mendis or even Dilshan.
Let us only hope that this dreadful pitch does not cause Randiv to lose his test spot - Murali's retirement means that obviously he will play more tests rather than just the one more played by Nilesh.
