By TCN News,
The squad announced by the Board of Control for Cricket in India for the upcoming Zimbabwe tour has five uncapped names; amongst them is Faiz Fazal, a 30-year-old cricketer from Nagpur. He is a tall, upright and a classical left-handed opening batsman.
India’s tour of Zimbabwe will comprise three ODIs on June 11, 13 and 15 and three T20s which have been scheduled for June 18, 20 and 22. Last week, the BCCI selectors announced following squad for these matches to be played at Harare, Zimbabwe:
MS Dhoni (Captain and wicket keeper), Lokesh Rahul, Faiz Fasal, Manish Pandey, Karun Nair, Ambati Rayudu, Rishi Dhawan, Axar Patel, Jayant Yadav, Dhawal Kulkarni, Jaspreet Bumrah, Barinder Sran, Mandeep Singh, Kedar Jadhav, Jaydev Unadkat and Yuzvendra Chahal.
Faiz Fazal is a left-handed opening batsman who plays for Vidarbha and bowls right-arm medium. Fazal made his first-class debut against Jammu & Kashmir for Vidarbha in 2003 where he scored 151 runs in the first innings. He has played 79 first-class matches so far with an average slightly over 40 and is also vice captain of Vidarbha.
(Image courtesty: Faiz Fazal World )
He is the only member of the team that will tour Zimbabwe who doesn’t have a contract in the Indian Premier League (IPL). He played for Rajasthan Royals in IPL for seasons 2011 and 2012 but was not picked after that.
He was in England playing for the Hetton Lyons Cricket Club in the Premier Division of the North East Premier League, Durham when he received news about his selection. There he made two centuries in four matches.
This is the second time that he is playing in England. Earlier he had played in the Yorkshire League as a 21-year old in 2007.
He has scored over 5,000 first-class runs and is Vidarbha’s leading run-getter in the recently-concluded Ranji Trophy, scoring 559 runs in eight games at an average just under 40. His century in the Irani Cup helped Rest of India (RoI) pull off a historic chase against Mumbai in March. He scored 127 runs anchoring RoI’s stunning chase of the steep target. Before this, Fazal had also made a match-winning century for India A in the Deodhar Trophy final.
Besides this, he is a medium-pacer as well, having registered a four-wicket haul against his name in the past.
He had missed the Under-19 World Cup in 2004 in Bangladesh because of an injury and was withdrawn from the squad, days before the team’s departure, and was replaced by Shikhar Dhawan. Incidentally, twelve years later Fazal is likely to open in place of Dhawan in Zimbabwe.