Valley's new recruit jets in

Valley’s new recruit jets in

Moonee Valley Cricket Club’s new recruit, Surender Dayma, arrived from India at the start of January and was immediately into action for our Club.

Surender has played four Ranji Trophy games – the equivalent of Sheffield Shield in Australia – with Delhi and has rubbed shoulders with some of India’s elite players along the way.

He has joined Moonee Valley for the rest of the 2010/11 season, with a view to coming back to play a full season in 2011/12.

On the Saturday, January 8, Surender was in the field in the Firsts down at Werribee. He played again the next day, in the Thirds at Ormond Park. Bowling his offies, he took 4/1 off two overs – and that one run was a wide!

MVCC is grateful that Surender’s employer, the Standard Chartered Bank North India Branch, has granted him extra leave to come to Australia and represent our Club.

Surender played junior representative cricket in Delhi with Moonee Valley’s chairman of selectors, Amit Chaudhary.

Surender is shown here (centre) with MVCC First Eleven captain Mark Gauci (left) and chairman of selectors Amit Chaudhary.

As a Ranji Trophy player he took the new ball with Ashish Nehra, who opened the bowling for India in the one-day series against Australia in October.

However, due to recent back injuries, Surender is more likely to send down his off-spinners for Moonee Valley.

In Ranji Trophy he has played with Nehra, current Indian Test openers Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir and Test spinners Amit Mishra and Piyush Chawla.

Surender’s opponents at the highest level include Test representatives Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, VVX Laxman, Praveen Kumar and current Indian captain MS Dhoni.