On Saturday morning (December 8), the 21-year-old Madhya Pradesh opener Ajay Rohera becomes the highest individual run-scorer as a debutant batsman in first-class cricket history.

Making his first-class debut in the ongoing match against Hyderabad at Indore, the right-handed young opening batsman played a knock of unbeaten 267 runs during his team’s first innings. The right-handed batsman scored 267 off 345 balls with the help of 21 fours and 5 sixes. That precious knock helped him to break the previous first-class debutant record of 260 runs by the famous Mumbai (then Bombay) batsman Amol Muzumdar who had achieved that record against Haryana at Faridabad in 1993/94 season.

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Coming to the Ranji Trophy game between MP and Hyderabad, Hyderabad was bundled out for just 124 runs in their first innings after losing the toss.

In reply, Madhya Pradesh declared their first innings on 562/4, thanks to Rohera’s record-breaking 267* and Yash Dubey’s maiden first-class ton 139*. At the end of the first innings clashes, MP took a 438-run lead over Hyderabad.

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At the end of day 1, when MP was batting on 168/1, Rohera finished the day on 81*. On the next day, he was very close to breaking the first-class debutant record as he remained not out on 255 runs at the end of that day. On the fine Saturday morning, Rohera broke that record.

Rohera is a consistent performer for MP’s youth cricket teams. In the last season’s COL CK Nayudu Trophy (2017/18), the MP U23 batsman scored 438 runs in six matches (10 innings) with the average of 48.67, including one century and three half-centuries.

In this season’s COL CK Nayudu Trophy (2018/19), Rohera has scored 386 runs in four matches (seven innings) with the average of 55.14, including one century and two half-centuries.

Top knocks by the first-class debutant batsmen