How long can they keep him out?

I am talking about Manish Pandey. It is not because I am a Pandey and that's why I am talking about him. I wrote an article about him last year when he became the first Indian cricketer to score a century in 20-20 IPl tournament and I am a big fan of him.

Manish is a fearless cricketer and provides excitement in the same vein as Virendra Sehwag does. Although he has a long road to cover to follow footsteps of Nawab of Najfgarh but he desperately needs a Godfather in the selection committee for that dream to realise.

http://www.cricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/412791.html?CMP=OTC-RSS
This is the scorecard from the Ranji trophy final earlier this year. Manish flopped in the first innings but played a gem of an innings while batting second time. Karnatka needing 338 runs to win in the 4th innings were in a precarious position at 46-4. Manish came out to bat and took the bull by horns. He attacked and played his shots and scored a whirlwind century scoring 144 in 151 balls.

It was looking as if Karnatka will pull off an unlikely win but once Pandey got out they succumbed to the pressure of chasing and folded like pack of cards (which often happens in such kind of chases). At that time I thought that selectors might have a look at him but there is always more than what it meets to the eyes...

Batting and fielding averages

	Mat	Inns	NO	Runs	HS	Ave	BF	SR	100	50	4s	6s	Ct	St
First-class	18	28	3	1203	194	48.12	1671	71.99	4	7	161	14	22	0
List A	20	20	1	544	95	28.63	592	91.89	0	3	45	18	11	0
Twenty20	36	34	5	756	114*	26.06	629	120.19	1	2	77	16	14	0

These are Manish Pandey's batting stats till date and he has already scored 4 hundreds in first class matches and all of them have come at crucial times. It wont be an exaggeration but the recent good showing by South Indian team can be owed to the sensational batting of his.

Even in the two matches he played at Champions league T20 he made 44 and 52. Manish has been performing consistently at all the levels and formats he has been given chances so far. I watched his innings of 44 against Lions and he was all out on attack against the quality opposition displaying good variety of strokes all sides of the ground. Manish Pandey's ability can be judged from the fact that it is not easy to score a hundred and he has the honour of scoring one in a T20 match.

Recenlty India played an Emerging player's tournament in SA and there Pandey's performance in t20 was
14 vs SA, 32 vs Aus, 11 vs Aus. Considering these were 20 over matches and some of them were really scoring, it was a decent performance.

1 vs SA, 14n.o. vs NZ, 23 vs Aus (match winning and also cleared the path for the finals) http://www.cricinfo.com/ept10/engine/match/467183.html


It would be intersting to see as how long can they keep him out from the national team. The challengers trophy is going to take place between 8-11 Oct 2010. Manish Pandey is playing for India Red. Watch this space for more on the RISING STAR OF UTTARAKHAND.......