Ishant Sharma toils for sweet rewards

NEW DELHI: Ishant Sharma's late career resurgence has had much to do with the way he has altered his length over the last two years. Now, left-handers batsmen around the world seem easy fodder for him, because of his impeccable accuracy around their off-stump corridor.
However, on the third day of Delhi's Ranji Trophy match against Hyderabad here at the Kotla, Ishant's new-found patience and consistency was tested.
With frontline pacer Pawan Suyal not taking the field at all in the second innings, the army of left-handed Hyderabad batsmen - led by skipper Tanmay Agarwal - challenged Ishant's motivation as the visitors wiped out the 215-run deficit and eventually set up an 84-run target. Tanmay's dogged resistance saw him score 103 but Ishant's famed perseverance fetched 4/89 too. Delhi ended the third day 60 short of securing a bonus point.
Pawan Suyal's absence, a flat pitch and a month away from competitive cricket meant Ishant had to put in more overs and effort than in the first innings. The consistency in his line and length outside the offstump wavered often, especially to southpaws Tanmay, No. 8 Tanay Thyagarajan and No. 9 Mehdi Hasan.
The grunts of despair came out frequently as the left-handers stitched together two nagging partnerships of 93 and 60. Mehdi finished with an enterprising 71 off 62 balls. As Ishant's outside-the-off-stump attack proved less penetrative, he resorted to attacking the stumps on a pitch beginning to show some variable bounce, and bowled two batsmen and picked up two LBWs.
The 96-Test old Ishant is careful about his ageing and wearing body. He wants to go slow in domestic cricket even though India are scheduled to play a handful of Tests. If ever there were questions about the significance of established international stars playing domestic cricket, this Ranji match has answered most of them - at least for Ishant and Shikhar Dhawan.
Now that Ishant has done his bit, it's for the openers Dhawan and Kunal Chandela to finish off the game with a bonus point to set Delhi's Ranji campaign rolling.