Vijay Hazare Trophy 2018: In a First, Nitish Rana Switches Hands While Batting

Is there something which Nitish Rana cannot do?

He bowled both off-spin and medium pace during Ranji Trophy. He kept wickets for an injured Rishabh Pant during Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. And now, he achieved a rare feat of batting with both handed in the same game, as per a report in Sportstar.

Nitish Rana is a left-handed batsman and a stroke-player, who relies more on boundaries to score runs rather than running between the wickets.

In the Vijay Hazare Trophy tie between Delhi and Tripura, Nitish switched his style of batting and batted right-handed on the first delivery of the 40th overs of Delhi’s chase.

Delhi needed three runs to win with 66 balls to spare when Nitish, batting right-handed, hit a boundary off Udiyan Ghosh to win the game. Riding on his innings of 94*, Delhi chased down a huge total of 299 with more than ten overs to win the game by eight wickets.

At the end of the game, Nitish revealed he changes hand while batting in nets, a technique which he used in the match too,

“It is an important knock for me ahead of the knock-out stage of this event and the IPL. I have tried switching hands during practice sessions, but not in a match before today,” he said.

It is probably the first time when a batsman has changed hands while batting during a competitive game. We have seen batsman like Kevin Petersen, David Warner playing switch-hit shot, but a batsman batting with the changed hand is something which is heard of for the first time.

Bowlers have done it in past –

Talking of the bowlers, there have been few instances of a bowler changing bowling arm. Vidarbha bowler, Akshay Kanwar has done it quite a few times and during a practice game against Australia last year too – he was playing for Board President’s XI – he switched his hands while bowling at Australian batsmen. He is the only ambidextrous bowler from India till now.

Kamindu Mendis, the Sri Lanka U-19 player who played for them during the U19 World Cup, is also an example of an ambidextrous bowler.

Nitish has started a new campaign of switching hands while batting and surely, one can see this technique being opted by another batsman as well.

Meanwhile, Delhi team is all set to face Maharashtra in their next contest. Ahead of the game, they have got a boost in the form of Ishant Sharma, who has joined the team.

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