Ranji Trophy 2017: Baroda’s high five spoils Mumbai’s 500 party

Lukman Meriwala and Atit Sheth lead the team off the field after scalping ten wickets between them. (Source: PTI)

The excitement in Munaf Patel’s voice on the other end of the line is palpable when he hears the name “Lukman Meriwala”. “Of course, of course, I will talk about him. Hamara yahan ka hai,” he says. Meriwala’s village Makan and Ikhar where Munaf lives are 4 km apart. Like Munaf, Meriwala too travels more than 50 km each way to train at Baroda. The two also share similar backgrounds — their fathers are both farmers — even though Munaf reveals that Meriwala was slightly more privileged.

“Like me, he never had to do odd-jobs to support his family,” is how Munaf puts it before immediately adding, “But bahut mehenti hai (very hard-working) and he never has had a problem with making the up-down trips to Baroda.”

It’s a day that Meriwala, a 25-year-old left-arm pacer from Baroda, has snared his maiden five-wicket haul in first-class cricket against a highly-fancied Mumbai batting line-up. It’s also a historic day for the hosts — this being their 500th Ranji Trophy match and all — which Meriwala along with fellow seamer and five-wicket-taker Atit Sheth have stained, shooting them out for a mere 171 on a lively Wankhede pitch.

It was only Meriwala’s third first-class match in what is the first four-day season for the erstwhile limited-overs specialist for Baroda. And he’d taken all of two wickets in his two previous Ranji matches this season.
Munaf if anything sounds a lot more elated about the youngster from his remote vicinage knocking out Mumbai at Wankhede than Meriwala himself does a few minutes earlier. And he laughs and says he’s not surprised by the youngster not quite over the moon after his performance.

“He’s this extremely simple guy, and often gets picked on and made fun of in the dressing-room. But I’ve never seen him get angry,” says Munaf. And he’s right. While 21-year-old Sheth was at ease while talking to the media, Meriwala took a lot of coaxing. And even as he did so, there were cheers from the Baroda camp with coach Atul Bedade himself joining in.

Painfully sincere

When it comes to his bowling though, Munaf insists, Meriwala is not only the keenest young seamer he’s seen in Baroda but also one who’s almost painfully sincere.

“He’s not the over-smart type that aap se baat kuch karega aur karega kuch. He’ll do exactly what you ask him to do. He’s very different. Whatever you ask him to do, he’ll keep doing it. Agar kuch nahi work ho raha ho toh aapko hi bolna padega nahi toh karta rahega. Itna seedha ladka hai. I have seen him from the last 7-8 years and he always wanted to keep bowling with me in the nets,” says Munaf.

On Thursday, Meriwala seemed to know exactly what he had to do after Baroda captain Deepak Hooda had won the toss and put Mumbai into bat, and it worked too. The pitch had a green tinge to it, and there was movement in the air. And the left-armer, who regularly clock 130 kph plus, focused on sticking to the basic plan of pitching the ball up and getting the batsman to drive. Shreyas Iyer did just that and perished, with a leaden-footed flash at an out-swinger that curved away from him sharply. Sheth to his credit stuck to the same plan too removing rising star Prithvi Shaw and Test star Ajinkya Rahane with full deliveries—the first swinging in to breach the gap created by a cover-drive and the second an out-swinger that got the outside edge.

Going around the wicket and squaring a right-hander up with an angled ball that straightens is a skill that many left-arm pacers don’t risk developing, forget attempting at the high level. It takes both immense skill and cerebral precision, both of which even the likes of Wasim Akram and Zaheer Khan only showcased once they had established their careers. Incidentally that’s exactly how Meriwala got his next two wickets—the 4th and 5th of his first-class career if you may. Suryakumar Yadav was the first victim after being excellently set up with a few deliveries that came in with the original angle. Just like Siddhesh Lad was post the lunch-session. Both batsmen reacted with a sense of shock, further emphasizing the danger and lack of options to survive this particular delivery presents.

Munaf though is not surprised by Meriwala’s ever-expanding bowling repertoire and puts it down to the youngster’s penchant to keep playing and keep bowling around the year.

“Whenever you ask him to play, club cricket, company cricket or any cricket in Bharuch, he’s always ready to play. He’s been playing for Jain Irrigation in Mumbai. He’s quite young but he’s been playing all around the place for quite a few years. So even if his first-class career is young, he’s gained a lot of experience and is confident with his skills,” he explains.

Street-smart bowler

True to Munaf’s words though, Meriwala’s take on his exploits were rather understated. When asked about the wickets that came his way, he put it down to “They were looking to play a lot when the ball was swinging in the morning.” And his response to this ability to bowl long, untiring spells was, “I was feeling happy that I was taking wickets so I enjoyed it.”

It’s a unique quirk of the Bharuch region that they keep producing fast bowlers with an innate sense of producing trickery with the ball, and an imitable sense of bare-basic practicality when it comes to countering a batsman, regardless of his skill or stature.

Like how Meriwala set up Shardul Thakur, a batsman known for his kamikaze approach, with a deep backward square-leg and a short ball.

Munaf puts this street-smartness down to the “raw” nature of cricket back home.

“In our area, you can have a batsman wearing no helmet come and get the better of you. So you have to be ready from the first ball for anything. It’s just very raw. It makes you naturally street-smart and ensures that you’re thinking on your feet,” he says with a chuckle.

He also has another theory though, one straight out of the Munaf Patel book.

“Dekho, here there are no distractions like in your cities. No clubs, hookah parlours or setting wala places. At the most, we can go out for dinner. So we don’t unnecessarily waste our time and all the time we have is spent on getting better at our work,  which for us is bowling.” It seemed very apt on a day Meriwala from little-known Makan got the better of the big-city boys in their own den.