The world may be busy rating his latest hairdo but India paceman Ishant Sharma was more concerned about news from Valsad, where his best friend was playing his first innings for Delhi in the Ranji Trophy. Gaurav Chabbra played all his cricket for Delhi juniors as the skipper — a unique record in itself.

He led Ishant and Virat Kohli, even added the India under-19 tag against his name, but lost count of the matches in which he sat on the bench during his transition phase to first-class cricket.

The situation couldn’t have been worse when he waked in on Monday. Delhi, chasing 351 for the vital first-innings lead against Gujarat, were 59/3 just after lunch. The 20-year old Chabbra nervously knocked at his first few balls at this level, but soon deciphered the doosra from Mohnish Parmar’s famous Muralitharan-like action, and then studied Siddharth Trivedi’s late outswing precisely to make a good first impression.

His 63 from 128 balls, with eleven crisp boundaries, showed his intent to attack at every available opportunity, but Chabbra couldn’t convert his innings into a big one, falling half an hour before close to a delivery from left-arm paceman Ashraf Makda that came in with the angle and trapped him plumb in front.

Then there was Yogesh Nagar, religiously scoring in junior cricket and repeatedly in and out of the Ranji squad without any playing time. His case may not be dramatic as Chabbra’s but Nagar has a chance to make a bigger impression on debut. Coming in at number seven, he was unbeaten on 40, along with Sumit Narhwal on 16, as Delhi finished the second day at 199/6, still 151 runs behind Gujarat.

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