Sunny Pal Dhillon is the winner of Scorpio Speedster 2005

Televisionpoint.com Correspondent
Channel 7 has announced the winner of its reality cricket show Scorpio Speedster 2005. The hunt spanning five months conducted across 10 cities received phenomenal participation from around 50,000 aspirants. Legendary international cricketer Wasim Akram of Pakistan and flamboyant ex-captain of Indian Cricket team Ajay Jadeja judges of the hunt finally found the new pace bowling sensation for the country in a young Delhi lad.

Sunny Pal Dhillon, 21 years old college student from Delhi was announced the winner. Apart from a cash prize of Rs 10 lakh the winner also gets a one season's training with MRF Pace Foundation, India's premier fast bowling institute at Chennai. Sabir Ali from Kolkata and Parvinder Awaana from Delhi are first and second runners up respectively.

The 7 finalists of the hunt were judged on multiple parameters like accuracy, endurance, and adaptability in bowling and overall cricketing ability. Sunny Pal Dhillon measured 135 kmph at the speed gun to beat thousands of competitors from across the country irrespective of being injured. His grit to win was an essential factor, which helped him score over other finalists & overcome his injury to emerge as the winner

Announcing the winner of the Scorpio Speedster 2005, Siddhartha Gupta, Director Channel7, "Scorpio speedster 2005 was Channel7's endeavor to give aspiring Indian bowlers a platform to showcase their talent and eventually get a chance to fulfill their dreams of playing for the country. We were confident of Channel7's fantastic production team, creative storytelling expertise and furthering Channel7's commitment to innovative non-fiction programming. The idea was not just to find who can bowl the fastest delivery in the nation, but to give India a TRUE speed demon, a potential cricketing icon, a complete fast bowler."

Besides Wasim Akram and Ajay Jadeja, Jhonty Rhodes of South Africa was also roped in to test the fielding skills of the aspiring quicks. Indian cricketers of repute like Mohamed Azharuddin, Vinod Kambli, Saurav Ganguly, Harbhajan Singh, V.V.S Laxman, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Kirti Azad, and many other were also a witness to this gala competition

Some of the very positive outcomes of Scorpio Speedster were that Sabir Ali, one of the finalists and also this year's first runner's up was invited by none other than ex- Indian skipper Saurav Ganguly for the net practice in Kolkata. He is likely to secure a place in West Bengal's Ranji team. Also, another of the 7 finalists Munis Ansari, winner from Gwalior, caught the eye of Greg Chappel, India's coach & was called up for net practice with the entire Indian team at Wankhere Stadium, Mumbai. He is also likely to secure a place in Madhya Pradesh's Ranji team

Scorpio Speedster was a five months exhaustive search, which identified the best 15 pacers who made it to the semi-finals in Mumbai. Of these, the fastest 7 made it to the finals. The other finalists included Pawan Singh from Chandigarh, Vinod Sadhu from Ahmedabad, Abhishek Jagan from Bangalore, and Munis Ansari from Gwalior.