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Young left arm spinner Manav Suthar made a dream debut in the Mullanpur Test being played between India and Afghanistan. Suthar made the situation of Afghan team weak by taking 3 wickets on the second day of the match (7th June). India declared its first innings on the score of 564 runs at the loss of 8 wickets. After this, just before the tea-break, captain Shubman Gill handed the ball to debutant Suthar.

Suthar took just 4 balls to leave his mark. He registered his name in the pages of history by taking the wicket of Afghanistan’s opener Sediqullah Atal on the fourth ball of his first over. Left arm spinner Suthar became the first Indian bowler in the last 25 years to take a Test wicket in his very first over. During this period, greats like R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Jasprit Bumrah also debuted but they too could not do such wonders.

Indian bowlers who took test wicket in the very first over

• Montu Banerjee vs West Indies, 1948
• Manohar Hardikar vs West Indies, 1958
• Vaman Kumar vs Pakistan, 1961
• Chetan Sharma vs Pakistan, 1984
• WV Raman vs West Indies, 1998
• Nilesh Kulkarni vs Sri Lanka, 1997
• Tinu Yohannan vs England, 2001

Why couldn’t Suthar’s family watch his bowling?

23-year-old Suthar performed brilliantly on debut, taking 3 wickets for 21 runs in 15.5 overs. He kept Afghanistan’s batsmen occupied throughout the day. However, his father returned home without seeing his bowling. Jagdish Suthar from Sriganganagar district of Rajasthan had traveled to Mullanpur with his family to see his elder son make his Test debut for India. However, on the second day of the match on Sunday, he returned home without seeing his son’s performance on the field.

Jagdish Suthar said, ‘I had come with my wife and daughter Mansi (Manav Suthar’s younger sister) to watch his debut. I can’t explain how I felt seeing him take the Test cap yesterday but today we came back home because we were all nervous and a little superstitious seeing him playing from the stadium.

Jagdish showed hesitation in taking credit for his son’s success on the cricket field. He said, ‘This is completely the result of Manav’s hard work and his hours of practice. He used to leave home for training in the morning and returned late in the evening. The credit for this goes to him and his childhood coach Dheeraj Sharma, to whom we all are indebted. Manav learned all his cricket from him. Jagadish also told that Manav Suthar is a big fan of the great spinner Ashwin.