RANA FRITTERS AWAY CHANCE AS DALAL HITS TON

NEW DELHI: Nitish Rana, one of Delhi’s brightest and classiest batting stars, who came good a couple of weeks back helping Delhi beat defending champions Vidarbha with a fourth innings century, has since returned to wasting his wicket.

After scores of 24, 0 and 10 following that ton, Rana had a steady start on Wednesday against Rajasthan before he hooked a short delivery to deep square leg fielder. Delhi, who had made more than 150 in the first session, riding on a commanding hundred by Hiten Dalal (102 off 93), were looking to build on it and no one was more capable than the Rana to carry it forward. But the vice-captain and No 4 disappointed. His skipper Dhruv Shorey had earlier scored just one to continue his poor run.

Thankfully for the hosts, Himmat Singh and Jonty Sidhu batted well to take them to a position of strength. At stumps, Delhi were 386/6 with Sidhu and Himmat falling in the nineties. While the team is in a commanding position, they should have kept wickets intact to guarantee a massive score for a chance of an innings or 10-wicket win to earn a bonus point that is needed to fancy hopes of a place in the knockouts.

But wasting starts and not converting them into big tons has been a story of Delhi this season.

Together with Dalal’s on Wednesday, they have scored just six centuries this season. They have 17 half-centuries, 14 of them from the top and middle-order batsmen.

Brief scores (Group A&B):

In Delhi: Delhi 389/6 (H Dalal 102, Sidhu 92, Himmat Singh 90) v Rajasthan.

In Rajkot: TN 250/7 (A Mukund 86; N Jagadeesan 61*; J Undakat 3-25 ) v Saurashtra. In Bengaluru: Baroda 85 (A Pathan 45; K Gowtham 3/25, A Mithun 3/26) v Karnataka 165/7 (K Nair 47; S Sopariya 3-40). In Lucknow: HP 220 (N R Gangta 49; Aaqib Khan 5/42, Ankit Rajpoot 3/57) vs Uttar Pradesh 23/1.

In Mumbai: Mumbai 352/4 (Sarfaraz Khan 169 not out, Aakarshit Gomel 122; Kuldeep Sen 3-67) vs MP. In Patiala: Bengal 138 (M Tiwary 73*, V Choudhary 6/54) v Punjab 93/3 (R Marwaha 48).

In Hyderabad Hyderabad 239/7 (AP Reddy 76*, RR Buddhi 52, Y Thakur

4/44, R Gurbani 3/48) v Vidarbha. In Nadiad: Andhra 177 (KK Shinde 49, A Nagwaswalla 4/18, A Patel 3/33) v Gujarat 2/0.