Jalaj Saxena becomes 1st player with 6000 runs and 400 wickets in Ranji Trophy

Kerala’s Jalaj Saxena achieved the historic feat of becoming the first player in the history of Ranji Trophy to complete 400 wickets and 6000 runs on Wednesday, November 6.

Saxena achieved the milestone during Kerala’s fourth-round fixture against Uttar Pradesh (UP) at St Xavier’s College Ground, Thumba, Thiruvananthapuram. The off-spinner achieved the feat during Day 1 of the game with his fourth dismissal as he got Nitish Rana stumped to complete the milestone. Saxena ran through the UP’s batting line up after Kerala skipper Sachin Baby won the toss and elected to bowl first.

He first cleaned up the opposition captain Aryan Juyal (23 off 57) and further dismissed Madhav Kaushik (13 off 58), Siddharth Yadav (19 off 25) and Rana to achieve the feat. He also went on to add one more wicket to his tally and registered 29th five-wicket haul in the Ranji Trophy history.

Jalaj Saxena’s stellar Ranji record

The Madhya Pradesh-born cricketer is the 13th player in Ranji Trophy to take 400 wickets. In the last season, he had become just the fourth player to score 9000 runs and 600 wickets across formats in domestic cricket. In the ongoing season, Saxena has scored 101 runs from two matches so far at an average of 50.50 with one half-century to his name.

With the ball, he’s scalped 13 wickets from four innings at an average of 19.09 and an economy of 2.85. The Ranji legend started his career for Madhya Pradesh way back in 2005 and scored 4041 runs while also picking 159 wickets for the team before shifting to Kerala in the 2016-17 season. In the 143 first-class matches played in his career, Saxena has scored 6795 runs at an average of 33.97 with 14 hundreds and 33 fifties to his name. The off-spinner has also scalped 452 wickets at an average of 25.68 and an economy of 2.74 with 30 five-wicket hauls and eight ten-wicket hauls.