All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

265 Nevertheless he continued to take wickets steadily for the rest of his career but unfortunately his time coincided with that of a number of other very good opening bowlers (including Zaheer Khan, Javagal Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad, Asish Nehra and Ajit Agarkar) and even an all-ten couldn’t get him back in the side. The selectors at least however showed faith in him in the shorter form of the game and he eventually played in 45 ODIs. He was a late choice for India’s 1999 World Cup squad. (His fluid bowling action was used as the official graphical logo for the tournament.) India failed to reach the semi-finals but the English conditions suited him and for his side only Srinath bettered his ten wickets which included Alec Stewart and Graeme Hick in successive legal deliveries (separated by a wide) at Edgbaston. The Duleep Trophy was first played in 1961/62 between teams representing the five geographical zones of India. It was named after the famous Test cricketer Kumar Shri Duleepsinhji who had died in 1959 aged only 54. In 2000/01 it was played on a league basis. Final positions would be heavily influenced by points garnered in drawn matches, leaving North Zone top of the table with East fourth and South last. Since its inauguration, North, South and West had shared the Trophy fairly equally. It would be over ten years before East Zone won it for the first time. Orissa provided five of the East Zone side: the first four batsmen, including captain Shiv Sunder Das, plus Mohanty. Assam and Bengal supplied the rest of the side. Only three of the side would play Test cricket (finishing with a total of 33 Tests between them), a marked contrast to their opponents, South, whose seven Test players (419 caps) included two batsmen, V.V.S.Laxman and Rahul Dravid, who would make over 22,000 Test runs, and two bowlers, Srinath and Prasad, who would take 332 Test wickets. It should have been a relatively easy game for South. An attractive tree-lined ground in Agartala the capital of the state of Tripura in north- east India, the stadium had hosted first-class cricket for two years and has been a regular venue for Tripura’s Ranji Trophy matches since. The South Zone attack was stronger than the previous year when, in the only other Duleep Trophy match that has been played on the ground, Virender Sehwag made 274 for North Zone, a ground record still to be beaten. Mohanty had come into the match in good form having taken 25 wickets in his last three matches, and on a helpful green-top he continued in similar vein, soon trapping both South Zone openers leg-before. South Zone captain Dravid came in at 16 for two to join Laxman. His previous four innings had been 200 not out, 70 not out, 162 and 188. This time he would struggle for 20 minutes before edging an outswinger to wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta, who would gain the first of his eight Test caps later in the year. Next man in was Vijay Bharadwaj. The previous season he had played the only three matches of an undistinguished Test career. He lasted just two balls, another Dasgupta victim. Meanwhile at the other end Laxman had been resisting solidly. He had reached a century (in some cases many more) in five of his previous seven innings, and later in the season would make a famous 281 against Australia. However, although he batted for nearly an hour and a half, on this occasion he never really mastered Debasis Mohanty