Irani Cup: Poor umpiring stops Gujarat march
With 359 runs ahead and two second innings wickets in hand, Ranji Trophy champions in line to set Rest of India imposing target
Despite having one of the premium seats at the Brabourne Stadium while the match is on, Prakash Dahatonde, statistician and Cricket Club of India librarian, was busy typing on the computer keys, unmindful of the 359-run lead that Ranji Trophy champions Gujarat took against Rest of India.After taking only 14 minutes to separate Rest's last wicket pair of Pankaj Singh and Mohammed Siraj and bowl them out for 226 for a 132-run first innings lead, Gujarat made 227/8 in their second innings.Seated right behind the umpire at the southern end of the Brabourne Stadium inside the second-floor air-conditioned library on Sunday, the third day of the ongoing Irani Cup, the 57-year-old Dahatonde was also shut out from the outside noises.Loud pleas by Rest medium-pacer Pankaj Singh to umpire Abhijit Deshmukh for a possible caught-behind or leg before wicket were muted for Dahatonde.
Nor was he ears to the mouthful that Gujarat captain Parthiv Patel gave on way back to pavilion after an atrocious bat-pad decision by umpire Virender Sharma. The ball was nowhere near the bat as the left-hander shouldered arms to left-arm spinner Shahbaz Nadeem shortly before tea.Dahatonde, who has been contributing yearly to the UK-based Wisden Almanac for close to 25 years, was busy indexing the hundreds of library books with newspaper clippings collected from the 1930s and 1940s until the start of the century, and preserving it for the future.Speaking about future, Patel considered that the dubious decision may have prevented him the chance to cement his place in the Indian team for the upcoming Tests, for the selectors' first choice wicketkeeper Wriddhiman Saha has proved his fitness and should take his 'rightful' Test place behind the wicket.Parthiv was hard done by, by umpire Sharma as he was not only beginning to out-bat Saha, who failed to open his account in the first innings here, but also trying to help Gujarat score a rare double of winning Irani Cup to follow the Ranji Trophy triumph.