The India selectors may be struggling to find pacemen with no fitness concerns, but they've ignored a few performers in domestic cricket, who've been bowling consistently and relentlessly.
Parvinder Awana is one of them, not being a first choice even for India 'A' teams. In the last 13 matches, Awana has bowled 427 overs with 47 wickets on batting wickets with good pace and stamina.
This year in two back-to-back matches on pure batting surfaces, he's had two four-wicket hauls. On Monday, his four wickets helped Delhi inflict a follow-on on one of the strongest batting line-ups in domestic cricket. Delhi's pace attack is as varied as it can get. But the bowlers, barring Ashish Nehra, have one thing in common --- stamina and a big heart.
Awana's partner, Pawan Suyal, a wily left-arm medium-pacer, picked up three by making the ball move and inducing edges.
{{/usCountry}}Awana's partner, Pawan Suyal, a wily left-arm medium-pacer, picked up three by making the ball move and inducing edges.
{{/usCountry}}Tamil Nadu, with the likes of current India players Abhinav Mukund, Dinesh Karthik and S Badrinath, were bundled out for 226, 329 runs adrift of Delhi's first innings total.
The duo was aided by medium-pacers Sumit Narwal and Rajat Bhatia's accurate and miserly spells.
The wicket offered some assistance as Awana (four wickets) and Suyal (three wickets) in particular, used it to good effect.
Delhi drew advantage off the first ball with Suyal having Baba Aparajith, a U-19 World Cup winning star, edge one to slip. Awana followed that with a wicket. TN were on the backfoot.
Brief resistance came from Dinesh Karthik (75) and R Prasanna (58). But Karthik let impatience undo the good work. Dancing down the track, he missed the line and was stumped. His dismissal triggered off a collapse.