Sport - Cricket

Saurashtra has its task cut out

Rajkot: At stumps on Monday evening Saurashtra’s Bhushan Chauhan and Sitanshu Kotak left the field with a honest sweat. Earlier left-hander opener Kanaiya Waghela did not offer a shot to seamer Gagandeep Singh and was declared plumb in front by umpire Sameer Bandekar.

The home team toiled for nearly four hours on the second day of the Ranji Trophy Super League match at the Race Course ground and given its palpable lack of wherewithal to be really incisive with the ball, allowed Punjab to take its score from 291 for five to 482 in the first innings.

Punjab added nearly 200 runs in around 56 overs with India under-19 star Taruwar Kohli making a steadfast 79 with a dozen hits to the fence and left-hander Ankur Kakkar making an attractive 67 with two sixes and half a dozen fours. The two became the second pair to raise 100 plus runs, the first one being Raviiinder Singh and Sunny Sohal.

Left-arm spinner Ravindersinh Jadeja provided the first breakthrough a quarter of hour before lunch when he won an appeal for leg before against Kakkar. Thereafter wickets tumbled, Jadeja got his five-wicket haul, another spinner of his ilk Rakesh Dhruv captured his first wicket and off-spinner Kamlesh Makwana removed Kohli.

At the lunch break, Manpreet Gony practised hitting hard shots and when his opportunity to bat came, he bludgeoned Dhruv for two electrifying sixes. The first one was a parallel shot, the ball not rising more than 20 feet after being firmly driven and landing on the barbed fencing.

The second six was power-packed and spectacular; he moved his right leg toward the off-stump and swatted the ball over long on. Gony’s 36-ball 33 egged on right through by his teammates in the balcony ended when left-arm seamer Sandip Jobanputra sent his off-stump flying.

The scores: Punjab — 1st innings: R. Ricky b Makwana 17, Raviinder Singh lbw b Jadeja 114, S. Sohal c Dhruv b Jadeja 103, P. Dharmani c Kotak b Jadeja 25, U. Kaul c Jogiani b Makwana 16, T. Kohli c Jogiani b Makwana 79, A. Kakkar lbw b Jadeja 67, Charanjit Singh c Kotak b Jadeja 4, Gagandeep Singh lbw b Dhruv 14, M. Gony b Jobanputra 33, Varun Khanna (not out) 3; Extras (b-1, lb-4, nb-2) 7. Total (in 146.1 overs) 482.

Fall of wickets: 1-51, 2-216, 3-258, 4-274, 5-291, 6-410, 7-424, 8-432, 9-457.

Saurashtra bowling: Jobanputra 21.1-5-74-1, Odedra 32-7-77-0, Dhruv 25-3-84-1, Makwana 28-5-115-3, Jadeja 35-7-106-5, Waghela 2-1-8-0, Kotak 3-0-13-0.

Saurashtra — 1st innings: K. Waghela lbw b Gangandeep 16, B. Chauhan (batting) 41, S. Kotak (batting) 22, Extras (nb-2) 2. Total (for one wkt. in 31 overs) 81.

Fall of wicket: 1-44.

Punjab bowling: Gangandeep 9-3-23-1, Gony 9-3-20-0, Khanna 2-0-7-0, Charanjit 11-4-31-0.

Other scores: Super League: At Ahmedabad: Gujarat 520 for nine decl. (Nilesh Modi 250, Niraj Patel 76) vs Hyderabad 33 for one.

At Sambalpur: Orissa 281 (B.S. Pati 72, S.S. Das 74, H. Das 59 not out, Vivek Yadav four for 45) vs Rajasthan 172 for two (Gagan Khoda 87 batting).

At Mysore: Karnataka 366 (R. Uthappa 133, S. Joshi 65, D. Kalyanakrishna four for 85) vs Andhra 161 for seven (V.M. Sai 70, S. Joshi four for 23).

Plate Division: At Margao: Goa 190 & 134 for four (A. Katkar 55 batting) vs Kharkhand 147.

At Palakkad: Kerala 334 (K.S.S. Sarma 103, V.G. Nair 65, J.T. Billa six for 58) vs Haryana 190 for one (R. Dewan 85 batting, Sunny Singh 63 batting).

At Kolkata: Services 107 vs Bengal 442 for six (R.B. Banerjee 176, A.P. Majumdar 80, L.R. Shukla 101).

At Agartala: Vidarbha 224 (F.Y. Fazal 40, R.S. Paradkar 75, T.S. Saha six for 51) & 30 for one vs Tripura 150 (M.S. Acharya four for 23).

At Dharamsala: Himachal Pradesh 295 (B.J. Thakkar 127, A. Mannu 50, S. Beigh six for 94) & 191 for no loss (B.J. Thakkar 77 batting, Sangram Singh 97 batting) vs Jammu & Kashmir 120 (Pervez Rassol 40).

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