Jaffer slams century, Ashwin bowls leg-spin
Nagpur, March 14: Domestic doyen Wasim Jaffer showed his mastery with a 53rd first-class hundred in Vidarbha’s 289 for two against Rest of India on the opening day of the Irani Cup, which witnessed an out-of-sorts Ravichandran Ashwin trying his hand at bowling leg breaks.
The Ranji Trophy champions were hardly bothered by the Rest of India bowlers on a placid Jamtha track as the 40-year-old Jaffer remained unbeaten on 113 off 166 balls with 16 boundaries and a six to his credit. He was as regal in his strokeplay as he has always been, becoming the highest ever run-getter in the history of Irani Cup.
Jaffer, who was appearing in his 242nd first-class matches, has now played 12 Irani Cup games (mostly for Mumbai, a few for Rest of India and now for Vidarbha) with over 1000 runs — the tally is more than the top-5 that includes legends such as GR Vishwanath, Dilip Vengsarkar and Sunil Gavaskar.
Ashwin’s figures of 25-166-1 won’t tell the story about him being largely ineffective primarily due to lack of assistance from the track. In between, Ashwin tried bowling leg-breaks, but Jaffer and Vidarbha skipper Faiz Fazal (89, 190 balls) negotiated him without much difficulty.
There has been insecurity about losing his place to younger wrist spinners in the limited overs set-up, and the more variations that Ashwin tried, the more he looked out of place. The leg-breaks didn’t turn and Jaffer at times would just lean on the back foot and tap it away. — PTI Brief scores: Vidarbha 289/2 in 90 overs (Wasim Jaffer 113 (batting), Faiz Fazal 89, Sanjay Ramaswamy 53, Ganesh Sathish 29, R Ashwin 1/66 in 25 overs) vs Rest of India.