Parthiv Patel leaves strong footprints in the 2015 domestic season: The diminutive Parthiv Patel has been leading Gujarat right from the front in all the formats of the game in the domestic circuit.
He shoulders a huge responsibility of captaining the team, keeping wickets and opening the batting, across all formats.
In the ongoing Mushtaq Ali Trophy 2016, Patel led Gujarat to two wins out of the three games played thus far. Losing the tournament opener to Himachal Pradesh by 5 wickets, Gujarat came back strongly to defeat Vidharbha by 60 runs and Hyderabad by 3 wickets.
Patel played a stellar role in both the victories. In the game against Vidarbha he registered his 13th T20 half-century and scored 59 runs off 57 deliveries with 6 fours and a six at 155.26 strike rate.
His partnership of 91 runs in 10.2 overs for the second-wicket alongwith Manpreet Juneja (37), helped Gujarat to pile up 174 runs for the loss of 7 wickets in their allotted 20 overs.
Gujarat bowlers Jasprit Bumrah (3.4-0-16-3), Rudra Pratap Singh (4-0-26-3) and Harshal Patel (4-0-36-3) were successful in restricting Vidharbha to 114 runs in 18.4 overs, and thereby registering their first win in this edition of the tournament.
Parthiv Patel came up with a ‘back-to-back’ half-century in the next game against Hyderabad. In the game played at Vidharbha Cricket Association Stadium, Nagpur, Patel notched up his 14th half-century in T20 format and went on to score a 40-ball 70 runs with 8 fours and 3 sixes, while chasing a target of 132 runs.
His first-wicket partnership of 99 runs in 11.2 overs alongwith Priyank Panchal (32) was very crucial and laid the foundation for the victory. Gujarat scored 134 runs for the loss of 7 wickets in 19.3 overs and won the game by 3 wickets with 3 deliveries to spare.
In these three games Parthiv has accumulated 164 runs with 70 runs as his highest, at an impressive average of 54.66 and 157.69 strike rate.
Patel had a very good outing in Ranji Trophy 2015-16 season. Playing in 8 games (12 innings), he has accumulated 452 runs at an average of 45.20 with 122 as his individual best. He has 2 centuries and 2 half-centuries to his credit.
He carried his good form into the one-day version, Vijay Hazare Trophy 2015. Having featured in 8 games (8 innings) he has compiled 295 runs at an average of 36.87 with 105 runs as his personal best. At a strike rate of 87.27, he has a solitary century and a half-century to his credit.
Though all these domestic performances could count, but Patel’s chances of getting into the national team for limited versions (ODIs and T20s) seems to be out of bounds, for the time being, with the skipper for the limited formats, MS Dhoni being prime mover of Team India.
However, the selectors might keep an eye on him for the longer version, since Wriddhiman Saha, who took over from Dhoni has not made much of an impact.
