Ranji Trophy 2017-18, Round 5, Day 2: Review

The second day of the fifth round of the ongoing season of Ranji Trophy saw the teams extending their advantage over their respective oppositions. Both the unbeaten batsmen on the first day, Cheteshwar Pujara and Mayank Agarwal, missed out on the double century as they were dismissed on 182 and 176 respectively. But their knock made sure Saurashtra and Karnataka posted huge totals on the board and effectively have now batted the opposition out of the game.

Assam ended the day 70 runs adrift of the first innings score of Uttar Pradesh as they scored 279/6. Saurabh Kumar was the star with the ball for the visitors as he scalped 4/54. Rohit Motwani scored his career-best 189 and steered Maharashtra to a mammoth total of 489 against Railways at MCA Stadium in Pune. Railways too started strongly as the openers added 88 runs until stumps. Karnataka were bowled out for a huge score of 649 against Delhi thanks to the century from Stuart Binny (118) which was also backed up by a 101-run stand for the last wicket between Shreyas Gopal (92) and Abhimanyu Mithun. Delhi openers saw the tricky period out and were 20/0 by the end of the day.

Jharkhand lost 5 wickets for 220 in 73 overs after bowling out Jammu and Kashmir for 376 earlier in the day. Haryana turned the tables on Rajasthan after a dismal performance on the first day. After being reduced to 99/7, they put on 223 on the board courtesy an attacking knock of 83 from Harshal Patel. Soon their bowlers came out and scalped 7 wickets on Rajasthan as they ended the day on 74/7 staring at a first-innings deficit. The lower-middle order put on a spirited performance for Saurashtra posted 570. In reply, Gujarat scored 45/0 in 14 overs before called stumps.

Andhra piled on the agony for Tripura and scored 402 runs batting first in their home ground. The home team then started off slowly and finished the day on 68/1. Vijay Shankar and Baba Aparajith slammed centuries as Tamil Nadu pummelled Odisha bowlers before declaring on 530/8. The openers looked solid in reply and added an unbeaten stand of 36 by the end of day 2. Baroda extended their lead on Mumbai as they lost only three wickets on the day and scored over 300 runs. They rode on an excellent century from Aditya Waghmode (138) and a half-century from Deepak Hooda (75). In the end, they looked set to score over 500 runs and finished the day on 376/4.

Bengal was in a spot of bother as they ended the day on 89/3, 410 runs adrift of the first innings score of Vidarbha. Sanjay Ramaswamy also missed out on a double century and was dismissed on 182 as the visitors piled on 499 runs. Chhattisgarh extended their lead to 214 runs over Himachal Pradesh and scored 389/6 by the end of the day. Goa and Services were involved in an interesting tussle as they would look to take the lead in the first innings. In reply to 263 posted by Services, Goa collapsed to 150/6 and lost the wicket in the last over of the day.

Brief Scores:

Group A

Uttar Pradesh 349/10 vs Assam 279/6 (Sibsankar Roy 72, Rishav Das 52; Saurabh Kumar 4/54) at Guwahati

Maharashtra 481/10 (RH Motwani 189, AR Bawane 92) vs Railways 88/0 at Pune

Karnataka 649/10 (Mayank Agarwal 176, Stuart Binny 118, Shreyas Gopal 92, Manish Pandey 74) vs Delhi 20/0 at Alur

Group B

Jammu & Kashmir 376/10 (Punit Bisht 115, Shubham Khajuria 101; Varun Aaron 4/54) vs Jharkhand 220/5 (Md Nazim Siddiqui 70, Anand Singh 68) at Jamshedpur

Haryana 223/10 (HV Patel 83) vs Team Rajasthan 74/7 at Lahli

Saurashtra 570/10 (Cheteshwar Pujara 182, Snell S Patel 156) vs Gujarat 45/0 at Rajkot

Group C

Andhra 402/10 (DB Prashant Kumar 133, Ricky Bhui 74, Hanuma Vihari 62; AK Sarkar 5/68) vs Tripura 68/1 at Agartala

Tamil Nadu 530/8 dec (Murali Vijay 140, Baba Aparajith 109*, Vijay Shankar 100) vs Odisha 36/0 at Cuttack

Mumbai 171/10 vs Baroda 376/4 (Aditya Waghmode 138, Deepak Hooda 75, Swapnil Singh 63*, Vishnu Solanki 54) at Wankhede

Group D

Vidarbha 499/10 (SR Ramaswamy 182, FY Fazal 142, AA Sarvate 88) vs Bengal 89/3 at Kolkata

Services 263/10 (VU Yadav 84, Nakul Verma 64) vs Goa 150/6 (Sagun Kamat 50; S Pandey 3/23) at Delhi

Himachal Pradesh 175/10 vs Chhattisgarh 389/6 (Rishabh Tiwari 131, Amanpreet Khare 78, Ashutosh Singh 54) at Dharamsala