Ranji Trophy 2016-17 Quarter-Finals Round Up: Abhishek Nayar's four-for gives Mumbai the edge over Hyderabad
Defending champions Mumbai finished the third day at 102/3 with a lead of 116 runs in the Ranji Trophy quarterfinal clash against Hyderabad at the Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Stadium in Raipur on Sunday.
Praful Wagela and skipper Aditya Tare were at the crease batting on 27 and 39 respectively with a partnership of 50 runs.
The Hyderabad pacers were able to make early inroads into the Mumbai batting line up by first getting rid of Kevin Almeida as Chama Milind cleaned him up. The next Mumbai batsman to go walk back to the pavilion was the inform Shreyas Iyer who was castled by Mohammed Siraj with the score reading 32/2 and then Suryakumar Yadav fell for 3. But Wagela and Tare got together to steady the ship.
Earlier in the day, Mumbai were quite brilliant with the leather to bowl out the opposition. Hyderabad resumed their innings on 167/3, 128 runs behind Mumbai’s first innings score of 294. With the way Tanmay Agarwal and Bavanaka Sandeep were batting many thought, the Subramaniam Badrinath led side would take the lead easily.
But then in the first session itself, Abhishek Nayar struck early by sending Sandeep (17) packing and then Agarwal was dismissed by Shardul Thakur. There was a brisk partnership of 58 runs between Kolla Sumanth and Mehdi Hassan but once it was broken Mumbai ran through the tail quite quickly.
Extra Cover: 2016-17 Ranji Trophy: Gujarat-Odisha quarterfinal stopped owing to poor pitch conditions
The last four Hyderabad batters could only contribute 7 runs to their eventual score of 280 where at one time they looked like surpassing 300 easily. The winner of this game will play Tamil Nadu in the semis starting from January 1.
In other matches
In another quarterfinal at Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur, Gujarat have taken a huge lead of 310 runs with 7 wickets in hand against Odisha.
Odisha resumed the day at 184/8 but they were cool bowled out for 199. Gujarat already had grabbed a 64 run lead and they piled on more misery for Odisha by getting off to a great start in their second innings too. Priyank Krit Panchal and Samit Gohel put up a first wicket stand of 149 runs. Panchal lost his wicket for 81 but Gohel went on to get a brilliant unconquered 110. Panchal went past Ajinkya Rahane in the list of highest run-scorers in a particular season.
Gujarat are presently sitting pretty on 246/3 after 86 overs.
In the third quarter-final which is presently underway at the Moti Bagh Stadium in Vadodara, Haryana lead by 59 runs with 8 wickets in hand against Jharkhand in the second innings.
Haryana were bowled out for 258 in their first innings and in reply, Jharkhand were 228/3 overnight courtesy of Virat Singh and Ishank Jaggi. Virat went onto get his century today morning as Jharkhand smashed their way to 345.
In reply, Haryana started off quite well courtesy of their openers Nitin Saini and Subham Rohilla but then lost both of them in quick intervals. Haryana are presently on 146/2.
Brief Scores:
At Raipur: Mumbai 294 and 102/3 against Hyderabad 280
At Jaipur: Gujarat 263 and 246/3 against Odisha 199
At Vadodara: Haryana 258 and 146/2 against Jharkhand 345