Injury lays Ishant low again, tie poised

NEW DELHI: Injury woes returned to haunt Ishant Sharma as he suffered a tight hamstring late on Friday evening to pull out of the third day’s play of the DelhiHaryana Ranji tie on Saturday.

The right-arm India paceman, who has been the backbone of Delhi for the past two games and will be crucial during the Test series against South Africa, was expected to bowl as Delhi looked to restrict the visitors in the second innings.

However, bad news emerged from the camp as he was asked by the team physio to rest for threefour days and not aggravate it. The disappointment of missing out was probably too much for him as sources in the Delhi camp said that he threw a chair in disgust.

Karnataka 350 & 93/1 Vidarbha 310

Assam 92 & 137 lost to Odisha 88 & 142/2 (G Podder 77*) Haryana 195 & 265 (V Sehwag 51, Manan 6/105) vs Delhi 237 & 69/0 (U Chand 48*)

GROUP B

Baroda 302 vs Andhra 328/3 (K

If not minor, it could rule him out for four-six weeks, meaning that he runs the risk of missing the second Test in mid-November, when he was expected to rejoin the

Vohra 104, Yuvraj 85*)

Railways 375 & 155/3 vs UP 169/2 (T Srivastava 93, R Mali 5/88)

GROUP C

Tripura 61 & 245 vs Goa 257 & 50/1 Hyderabad 434 vs HP 402/5 (A Bains 161, R Bist 91*) Jharkhand 202 & 262 (I Kishan 58) vs Kerala 148 & 71/1.

India team. He will miss the first Test due to a ban on disciplinary grounds.

Injury had earlier forced Ishant to miss the World Cup Down Under, where India reached the semifinals. However, in recent times, the paceman seemed to have worked on his fitness and gained a yard of pace, and extracted disconcerting bounce to help India win the Test series in Sri Lanka. The status of the injury will be known once the MRI is done. As of now, he could be doubtful for Delhi’s tie with Bengal that begins on October 22.

Ishant’s absence was felt as Haryana trudged to 265, setting Delhi a target of 224 to win. Thanks to Unmukt Chand’s blazing 48 not out, Delhi had already wiped off 69 runs.

Earlier, it was left-arm spinner Manan Sharma’s solo show that helped Delhi bowl out Haryana. Bowling about 50% of the 90-odd overs, and 30 on the trot, the spinner stuck to a wicket-to-wicket line to pick up six wickets including the prized scalp of Sehwag.