THE ball landed with a thud straight on one of the blue chairs in the North Stand. There were many such to wering shots which made their way into the stands from the bat of Ishan Kishan.The left-handed batter, who recently helped Jharkhand win the Syed Mushtaq Ali title and made his way into the Indian T20 side, showed his aggressive sideas the team started its preparation for the first T20 International against NewZealand he reat VCA’s Jamtha Stadium on Sunday. The first encounter of the five match series, aprecursor to next month’s World Cup, begins January 21 under the lights.

 

Most of the Indian team members led by Suryakumar Yadav reached the city on Saturday evening. Even though it was an optional session, all cricketers barring HardikPandya, hit the nets in all seriousness. Captain Yadav, Axar Patel, Sanju Samson, Ravi Bishnoi, Shivam Dube,Abhishek Sharma, Varun Chakravarthy, Rinku Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Ishan Kishan allwere seen fine-tuning their skills on Sunday morning. Samson looked more determined among all as he opened the nets at around 11.30 am and was thelast to step out of the field at 2.30 pm.

 

The players decided to use the practice pitches instead of the batting nets situated outside the main field. Axar and Bishnoi occupied one nets while Chakravarthy and Bumrah rolled over their arms on the adjacent turf. Abhishek Sharma preferred sprinting and stretching exercise before strapping his pads. Samson started the nets facing throw downs and then took on the net bowlers. Ishan faced spinners Bishnoi, Patel and Chakravarthy. Even Rinku Singh rolled his arms to Ishan who tonked the ball to quite a distance on a few occasion.

 

Bumrah did not bowl full throttle initially and was seen rolling his arms from two-three steps. He then changed the nets and bowled medium pace deliveries to Samson. Suryakumar, whose form is a bit of concern, joined Ishan and tried to connect the ball but on few occasions mistimed his shots. Dube,after some sprinting and high catching,rolled his arms to Sharma. He then occupied the pitch to hit some lofty shots into the stands. A three-hournets session ended as cricketers walked back to pavilion drenched in sweat.