Tyagi joins the pace queue

Looking at the current pool of medium-pacers queued up in the Indian squad, one can easily say that there is certainly a ‘No Entry’ sign board hung on the door for a new comer. With Ishant Sharma now fit, Zaheer Khan, Munaf Patel, Irfan Pathan, S Sreesanth, RP Singh and Praveen Kumar all battling amongst themselves to have the right to bowl with the new ball, Tyagi can continue to enjoy the waiting game, for despite being the highest wicket-taker in the last Ranji Trophy season, the 19-year-old Uttar Pradesh medium pacer is not likely to find a place in the senior squad.

The national selectors have already begun narrowing down their choice of pacers to line up against the Australians, who would be in the country next month, but Tyagi says he is ready to wait for his turn. At the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Friday, those who saw Tyagi uprooting the Australian A batsmen’s stumps, proclaimed they had witnessed the making of a new pacer on the anvil. The lanky Ghaziabad lad bowled some terrific in-swingers, which impressed not only his team mates, but also Aussie A skipper, Simon Katich. Tyagi deserves all the praise he got as his second innings spell, where he picked up four wickets, came on a track that was providing more assistance to the spinners

“He looks good and it was remarkable to see the way he was getting the ball to reverse swing in the last session. Some of the deliveries he bowled were almost unplayable,” said Katich.

This was only his second match after recovering from a back injury four months ago. “I was a little bit nervous today and was trying too hard also. I need to work on bowling to left-handed batsmen,” pointed out Tyagi, whose unfortunate injury had forced him to skip the inaugural Indian Premier League (IPL) for MS Dhoni's led Chennai Super Kings XI.

In Tyagi’s absence, Punjab's Manpreet Singh Gony was chosen. Gony caught the eye and was picked for the Asia Cup that was played in Pakistan. Quizzed if he missed playing in the IPL, the youngster admitted:

“It hurts sometimes. I was out of Cricket for four months and feel if the injury hadn’t happened, I might have been selected.” Recently, Tyagi bowled to India one-day skipper Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh and the duo were impressed with his speed. “Kya tez phekte ho aap. Keep it up,” is what Dhoni later told the seamer.

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