The Board of Control for Cricket in India has announced Team India’s squad for the upcoming ICC World Test Championship final against New Zealand and the succeeding five-match Test series against England during the course of the English summer. While Hardik Pandya and Prithvi Shaw failed to make the cut, interestingly a new name in the form of Arzan Nagaswalla has popped up in the announced squad as a stand-by net bowler. In this article, let’s discuss and know who this new name is and what he brings to the table.
Arzan Nagwaswalla’s inclusion, as a standby player, is a pivotal moment in Indian cricket history as after a long long time a Parsi cricketer has broken his way into national reckoning. Nagwaswalla is an upcoming pace bowler from Gujarat who has turned heads in domestic cricket in recent times courtesy of his performances in his first two seasons of Ranji Trophy.
The Parsi community has given Indian cricket a plethora of legendary names in its rich cricket history. Apparently, he is the only Parsi cricketer currently playing at the first-class level in India. He’s the first Parsi to make it to the Indian Men’s team since 1975 after Farokh Engineer. While the former Indian women’s team captain Diana Edulji who played her last game in 1993 and was the last Parsi to play for India.
Nagaswalla is a left-arm pacer who plays for Gujarat and has represented the state on U-16, U-19 and U-22 sides. The 23-year-old has so far played 16 first-class matches so far and picked up 62 wickets and averaged a healthy 22.53. In 20 List A matches, the medium-pacer has picked up 39 wickets and averaged 21.76. While his List A debut was against Rajasthan, in the same year, in which he picked up a couple of wickets. He, however, made his T20 debut in 2019 in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and picked up 3 wickets against Tamil Nadu.
He has 4 five-wicket hauls and a 10-wicket haul in first-class cricket. The left-arm quick impressed all with his imperious bowling performance against Punjab in the 2019-2020 Ranji Trophy season when he picked up 5/55. He rattled Punjab’s top-order in the opening spell and laid the foundation for his team’s win. He picked up 41 wickets in that season. It will be a really good experience for the youngster to gain foreign experience although he may not feature in the playing eleven.
