A man apart

In the Pittsburgh Cricket Association league this year, there was a spectacular burst in the number of runs scored. Usually, 25 over matches are not conducive to big individual scores, but as many as 8 batsmen recorded centuries, and, incredibly, 48 batsman (in the 10 team league) made at least one score of 50 or more.

The shorter square boundaries and a completely benign pitch contributed to this run-glut and bowling on it was, truly, a nightmare. (The ICC would gleefully endorse the pitch for their ODI's, I am sure).

Even with all this run scoring, one person stood out. Not surprisingly, it was Sohail Chaudhry. On August 17th, he wrote a new chapter in his already PCA-legendary career. For years many of us have wondered what the ceiling would be for a Sohail inning where he batted the entire 25 overs. It turns out, we underestimated how potent he was. He finished on 232 not out, with 27 fours, and 13 sixes, against just 27 singles and 16 dot balls. It's not often that a batsman scores 80 runs in 31 balls and gets completely overshadowed, as Ajay Nayak was on that day. Check out the batting scorecard for this game against the Blitzers.


And, just for fun, check out the scorecard of the hapless bowlers. Sohail wasn't the only one to score a century that day!

Not surprisingly, he went through a mini-slump after that innings but recovered his mojo in the last game, where he scored 82 not out in just 28 balls, thereby locking up his third consecutive Champion Player of the League award, an honor he has achieved in every PCA season that he has been a part of!

Batting is indeed easy on the Edgebrook Field pitch but do note that Sohail's 232* is almost 60% higher (86 runs) than the next highest score (146*) ever made in the PCA league. To put that run differential into perspective, the corresponding highest score in Test cricket (as of today) would have to be 640 (to Brian Lara's 400*). No matter how weak the attack or how easy it is to score runs, this is truly a very remarkable feat.

And typical of the man, in the post-match huddle, the only topic he discussed was the fact that the bowlers gave up more than 200 runs to the Blitzers in their run-chase. To date, he has not spoken about the innings unless goaded by others to talk about it. Even then, the most you can get out of him are a couple of sentences.