Indian young pacer Harshit Rana has managed to get three wickets against England sparing 53 runs on 6 February 2025. This was his ODI international debut. With this Rana has registered a record in his name by becoming the first Indian bowler to take 3+ wickets in all his international debut formats.
Harshit Rana’s Debut
Earlier during the T20 match at Pune, Rana was replaced by Shivam Dube as a concussion substitute and took three wickets for 33 runs. This also sparked controversy as many spectators considered this unfair because Shivam Dube and Harshit Rana are not ‘like for like’ replacement for each other. He made his test debut last year at Perth during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy where he took three wickets by giving 48 runs and gave India a strong pace attack from the other end. The main highlight of Rana’s spell was when he bowled Travis Head who many times turned out to be a nightmare for Team India.
Umesh Yadav’s Debut
Umesh Yadav’s international cricket Journey began with his ODI debut on May 28, 2010 against Zimbabwe, where India suffered an unexpected loss to the ICC 10th rank team. In that match Yadav bowled 8 wicketless overs conceding 48 runs while defending a target of 285. His test career commenced on 6 November 2011 against the West Indies in which despite bowling19 overs and giving away 52 runs Yadav landed wicketless in the scorecard but found better success in the second innings claiming two wickets while conceding 36 runs in seven overs, he completed his format abuse by making T-20 international entrance against Sri Lanka on 7 August 2012 in the shortest format of the game he picked up one wicket while conceiving 24 runs in his three over spell.
Who is better?
Both players have also featured for the Shah Rukh Khan owned Kolkata Knight Riders during IPL season. All the above data somehow suggest that Rana had a better international debut performance than Umesh Yadav but it would be interesting to see how the young pacer’s career would go on in the future.
