At close on Day Two,Services paceman Suraj Yadav joined his team-mates who were stretching and cooling down after nearly two gruelling days on the field against Kerala. He had an ice-pack on his shoulder extremely sore after nearly 37 overs with the ball but wore a huge smile on his face. A year after his debut first class season was cut short even before it started,because of the ban slapped on his team,23-year-old paceman from Delhi made a dream debut when he picked up six wickets for 86 runs. Suraj,a right-arm medium pace bowler with a whippy action,had accounted for two of the three wickets that fell on Day One of this Group A Plate Division game against Kerala. Suraj's wicket-taking delivery proved to be the inswinger. But he bagged his first wicket of the morning with a delivery that kicked up after it pitched leaving Kerala skipper Raiphi Gomez no option but to offer a thick edge to Services captain Yashpal Singh at second slip. Yadav scalped Kerala wicketkeeper CM Tejas after the batsman was beaten by movement through the air. The ball pitched on middle and then cut away off the seam to knock over the off-stump. Yadav would have also gotten rid of Sreekumar Nair,who went on to score 137 early on. Yashpal came up with a great effort to get a hand to the ball from third slip but spilled the catch. Yadav would go on to bowl further long spells but was left unsuccessfull until his 37th over. He first had Sony Cheruvathur,who had made his maiden first-class fifty,hit a ball right back at him and then went on to trap last man K Sreejith in front of the stumps with another big inswinger. With two wickets in two balls,he will be on a hat-trick if Kerala at the start of Day Three. Yadav who lives in Najafgarh in Delhi,in the same lane as Delhi pacer Pradeep Sangwan,said after the match that he was desparate to make a name for himself in his debut which was delayed because of injury and then for reasons beyond his control. Yadav had joined the Air Force when he was 18. "My father had just passed away because of cancer,and I needed a job. I probably would have quit the game if I had not got into the Air Force." However just a year after he joined the services,he suffered a slipped disc in his back. Advised surgery by doctors at the Indian Spinal Research Institute,he refused,in order to be able to get back into the game. After three months of bed rest and then a further nine months of physiotherapy,he made his return. He took 17 wickets in four games in the Inter-Services tournament last year and was selected to the Ranji squad. Brief scores: Kerala 1st innings 454 all out in 170.2 overs (Sreekumar Nair 137,Rohan Prem 98,Suraj Yadav 6/86,Nishan Singh 2/100) Services 1st innings 16 for no loss in 7 overs (Pratik Desai 11 n.o)
