Anupam Sanklecha tops the ‘wicket-takers’ table at end of league stage: The 34 year old veteran, Anupam Amrutlal Sanklecha, of Maharashtra is at the top of the table of ‘leading wicket-takers’ at the end of the league stage of Ranji Trophy 2016-17.
With 43 wickets from 13 innings, at an average of 16.18 and a 2.68 economy, Sanklecha is closely followed by Pankaj Singh of Rajasthsan, who has a tally of 41 wickets from 15 innings. Both of them have featured in 8 games each for their respective teams.
Anupam also has five ‘5-wicket’ hauls and a couple of ‘10-wicket’ hauls too. His best bowling performance, in an innings, has been 8 wickets for 73 runs that came in the first innings against Assam, played at IIT Chemplast Ground, Chennai.
After his team batted first and put up a huge total of 542 runs in the first innings (his contribution with the bat being 34 runs), Sanklecha was successful in restricting Assam to a paltry 256 runs by picking up the wickets of Rishav Das (86), Rahul Hazarika (5), Sibsankar Roy (0), Amit Verma (27), Kunal Saikia (39), Jamaluddin Syed Mohammad (15), Swarupam Purakayastha (5) and Arup Das (7).
Sanklecha’s best bowling performance, in a match, has been 14 wickets for 94 runs which came in the game against Vidarbha played at the iconic Eden Gardens, Kolkata.
He went on to pick up 7 wickets in each innings.
Putting the opposition into bat, Saklecha was successful in restricting them to a meagre 59 runs in their first innings that lasted only 28 overs in 139 minutes.
He bagged 7 wickets giving away only 25 runs in his spell of 11 overs.
Taking a lead of 273 runs in the first innings, Maharashtra restricted Vidarbha to a total of 270 runs, backed by a wonderful bowling performance by Saklecha, who picked up another 7 wickets, giving away 69 runs in 25.1 overs.
Maharashtra won the game by an innings and 3 runs.
For his bowling effort of 14/94 in the match, Saklecha was awarded the Player of the Match.
Since making his First Class debut against Baroda at Pune in Nov 2004, Sanklecha has featured in 48 games and has picked up 174 wickets, at an average of 25.08, economy of 2.92, with 8/73 in an innings and 14/94 in a match being his individual best performances, respectively. He also has 10 ‘five-wicket’ hauls and 2 ’10-wicket’ hauls, respectively, to his credit.
With age not on his side his performance/s would have very little or no impact on the selectors.
