Saurashtra gain early advantage in final

KOLKATA: Jaydev Unadkat and Chetan Sakariya took three wickets apiece as Saurashtra skittled out Bengal for 174 on a lively Eden Gardens pitch on the first day of their Ranji Trophy final here on Thursday.

Saurashtra ended the day on 81/2, trailing Bengal by 93 runs, and with an early upper hand in a final that looked set for an outright finish. With the ball still 17 overs old, the morning session of Day 2 is going to be crucial for Bengal if they want to stay in the game but the batters need to come good too. Saurashtra, on the other hand, will look to get as big a first innings as possible.

“The day didn’t belong to us, but we are hoping to make a strong comeback on Day 2,” said Bengal captain Manoj Tiwary.

Losing the toss played a big role in Bengal’s capitulation but equally thoughtless was the shot selection. Despite taking two wickets, Bengal’s bowling was largely wayward and indisciplined as Saurashtra scored at almost five runs per over.

Eight balls was all Saurashtra needed to remove Bengal’s openers. Unadkat, released from India’s Test squad to play the final, dismissed Abhimanyu Easwaran with a beautiful inswinger that popped to shortleg after taking a bat-pad. Sumanta Gupta—handed a debut—was opened up next over by Sakariya; the ball taking an edge and flying to the slip cordon. Two balls later, No. 3 Sudip Kumar Gharami planted his front foot on off-stump and shouldered arms to Sakariya, only to see the ball swing back in and take his off-stump. Unadkat then came round the wicket and teased Tiwary into fishing a fifth stump ball to gully. Anustup Majumdar, Bengal’s crisis man, was next removed caught behind before Akash Ghatak miscued a pull as Bengal were tottering at 65/6.

But then came the turnaround—a 101-run stand between allrounder Shahbaz Ahmed and wicketkeeper-batter Abishek Porel for the seventh wicket as they batted out more than a session. Ahmed took on the role of aggressor, clipping Unadkat through square-leg for a four off the first ball he faced.

Abhishek was slower off the blocks but he was the anchor Bengal needed as Ahmed started threading the gaps. It wasn’t a chanceless passage of play though as balls took edges, landed just in front of slip or flew perilously close to the stumps. Saurashtra lost the plot a bit as well, wasting two reviews and then deciding not to challenge a leg-before decision against Ahmed when he was on 38. Replays later showed the ball was hitting stumps.

Both batters rode their luck and capitalised on the errors to find more boundaries, grafting a 101-run stand before Ahmed was caught at short leg off a Dharmendrasinh Jadeja delivery. Tea was called at the fall of that wicket, and with Bengal having reached 166/7, 200 didn’t seem impossible. But Saurashtra quickly snuffed out that hope as they took the last three wickets— including that of Abhishek who fell just after scoring his fifty—in the space of 12 balls.

With almost 90 minutes still to go for the end of day’s play, Bengal’s seamers almost wasted the new ball. Akash kept overstepping, forcing Tiwary to change ends while Mukesh Kumar was trying to take the ball away when inswing was his strength. Harvik Desai’s charge helped Saurashtra race away to 38 before Jay Gohil played Akash on to his stumps. But Bengal failed to build on that pressure, conceding too many boundary balls till No 3 Vishwaraj Jadeja edged Mukesh to the wicketkeeper in the penultimate over.

174 in 54.1 overs (S Ahed 69, A Porel 50; C Sakariya 3/33, J Unadkat 3/44) vs

81/2 in 17 overs.

PTI Jaydev Unadkat, released from the India squad to play the final, picked up three wickets on the opening day against Bengal.