MUMBAI: Shahbaz Nadeem, the left-arm spinner, has broken the List-A record for best bowling figures with an incredible 10-4-8-10 against Rajasthan in the Vijay Hazare Trophy.
The two-decade-old mark was in the name of Rahul Sanghvi, a former Delhi-based left-arm spinner who played one Test and 10 one-day internationals at the turn of the millennium. Sanghvi had 8/15 for Delhi against Himachal Pradesh in an Indian domestic game in the 1997-98 season.
Nadeem, who has been on the fringes of selection to the Indian national team for years and has been a regular for the ‘A’ side, matched Sanghvi – and 10 others – on the number of wickets, but gave away five runs fewer than Sanghvi’s 15. The record in ODI cricket remains Chaminda Vaas’ 8/19, which he got against Zimbabwe in Colombo on 8 December 2001.
At one point in the game against Rajasthan in Chennai on Thursday, 20 September, it looked like Nadeem might just pick up all 10 wickets. By the end of his eighth over, he had all the eight wickets to have fallen at that stage in his kitty.
But Anukul Roy, also a left-arm spinner and a part of the Indian team that won the ICC Under-19 Cricket World Cup 2018, picked up the wicket of Rahul Chahar to break Nadeem’s monopoly on the scoresheet.
Nadeem might still have become the first to pick up nine wickets in a List-A game, but went wicketless in his last two overs, and Roy came in to finish the innings off with his second wicket, Rajasthan shot out for just 73 in 28.3 overs.
For Nadeem, it was yet another big show in a career that has seen some remarkable performances.
His best in List-A cricket before this was 5/30, and overall he had 116 wickets in 86 outings before Thursday. He has been a prolific wicket-taker in first-class cricket too: 375 from 99 games, and in Twenty20s, he has 89 wickets at an economy rate of 6.77 from 109 matches.
