Shreyanka Patil's sweet birthday wish for Jemi Rodrigues

India women’s spinner Shreyanka Patil shared a heartfelt message to teammate and friend Jemimah Rodrigues on the occasion of her 26th birthday on Saturday. Sharing a series of pictures of the dynamic duo’s off-field fun to her 5.3 million Instagram followers, Shreyanka wrote: Happy Birthday Jemu! Looking forward to another goofy year with you. Be you, be crazy, and make everyone crazy [about you]. Love you loads.

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Pakistan Cricket Board is undertaking a significant rebuilding phase following poor tour performances. Senior players have been removed from the squad for the final Test match. Former bowler Shoaib Akhtar believes the board has lost confidence in the current team. He stressed the need to protect the careers of younger fast bowlers. The board is now focusing on developing a new generation of players for the future.

Indian Test and ODI captain Shubman Gill made a strong start to his Sher-E-Punjab T20 League campaign, scoring 40 off 21 balls on his debut for Fazilka Falcons before his side held off Ludhiana Lions by one run in a thrilling finish at SAS Nagar, Mohali, on Sunday.

Gill’s first appearance had been one of the main talking points before the match. The India captain opened the innings after Ludhiana skipper Arshdeep Singh won the toss and chose to bowl. Gill did not take long to make an impact, hitting seven fours and a six during his short stay at the crease.

His innings gave Fazilka early momentum, but the Falcons lost their way after his dismissal. Kartik Chadha removed Gill and went on to finish with impressive figures of 4/9 from four overs. Despite Chadha’s spell, Fazilka recovered through Prerit Dutta, who scored 36 off 23 balls, and Jaiveer Bhinder Singh, who added 21 off 18. The Falcons finished on 170/9.

Ludhiana’s chase looked in trouble as wickets fell at regular intervals. Karteek Sharma tried to hold the innings together with 32 off 29 balls, but the Lions struggled to keep up with the required run rate.

The match changed late in the innings when Krish Bhagat and Madhav Pathania began attacking the Fazilka bowlers. Their unbeaten 61-run partnership from 29 balls brought Ludhiana back into the contest.

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Pathania remained not out on 37 off 16 balls, while Bhagat finished unbeaten on 28 off 23. The Lions needed 19 runs from the final over and took the game to the last delivery. With six required from the final ball, Pathania could hit only a four, leaving Ludhiana on 169/8.

Fazilka escaped with a one-run win, while Gill was named Player of the Match for his contribution on debut. His 40 was the highest score in the Falcons’ innings and helped set up a match that went down to the final ball.

Gill will be back in action on Monday when Fazilka Falcons face Abhishek Sharma’s Amritsar Royals. The match will give him another chance to build on his first outing in the league.

Skipper Ishan Kishan struck a flowing unbeaten 111, leading East Zone to a commanding 385 for four against a sloppy South Zone on the opening day of the Duleep Trophy final here on Sunday. Kishan (14x4, 1x6) and Kumar Kushagra (63) were batting at stumps, and the fifth wicket pair has so far added 144 runs in just 26.4 overs. The other contributors were teen phenom Vaibhav Sooryavanshi (44, 37b), Abhimanyu Easwaran (72), and Shikhar Mohan (85).

Kishan, who completed 4000 first-class runs, merged aggression and composure to a nicety in his 135-ball knock, and raised 94 runs for the fourth wicket with Mohan. It came at an important juncture too when East were in trouble, the only time in the first innings so far, at 147 for three.

South could have had their rivals in a far deeper predicament but Kishan and Mohan averted the disaster on a pitch that remained true the whole day. Kishan's was a complete innings, sending the ball to all parts of the field through powerful pulls and imperious drives through the covers.

The left-hander reached his fifty in 71 balls and then the next 50 came off 51 balls, completing his 10th first-class hundred. Kishan reached the landmark with a driven four off Shreyas Gopal, who was playing in his 100th first-class match. At the other end, Mohan has a solid presence, showing a lot more maturity than his tender 21 years.

The feature of his innings was the judgment he showed to leave the ball outside off-stump. There was not even one single play and miss in his innings. But his fifty was not all about defence as Mohan carted off-spinner Tripurana Vijay for a six and two fours in one over to showcase his range. Just as he was nearing a well-deserved hundred, Mohan chopped left-arm pacer CV Milind, who replaced an injured Vidwath Kaverappa, on to his stumps.

In fact, it was the East's first innings story in a nutshell, batters getting dismissed before the innings reached the full bloom. Easwaran, who is often dubbed as an obdurate batter, looked in complete control, and at times even outpaced Sooryavanshi.

They milked 100 runs for the opening wicket in just 14.overs and East seldom let that momentum slip. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi would curse himself for playing a rather reckless pull off Milind for substitute Tanay Thayagarajan to offer a simple catch in the deep. It, perhaps, was the first time South bowlers tested the young left-hander with a short-pitched ball and it yielded instant results.

The whole sequence will teach the Bihar youngster to show more patience in the middle, particularly when nearly 10,000 spectators thronged the MA Chidambaram Stadium to watch the latest wonder kid in cricket. Kushagra too played with determination as South withered under a barrage of runs. Nothing more revealed the plight of South than the sight of lead pacer Mohammad Siraj going through three colourless spells.

The India quick's outing on the day read - 5-0-41-0, 5-1-24-0 and 4-0-31-0 for an overall reading of 14-1-96-0. Siraj was clobbered around by Sooryavanshi (6, 4, 4), Easwaran (4, 4), Kushagra (6, 4) as the Hyderabad man struggled to make an impact.

He can partly blame a flat pitch for his ineffectiveness, but there was no real attempt from his side to alter the course of the happenings. Unless, South find a way to pluck East's remaining six wickets on Monday quickly they will be further buried under an avalanche of runs, and will find it tough to come out of it.

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