Tamil Nadu coach VB Chandrasekhar lashed out at Karnataka’s decision to continue to play even after taking the innings lead during a Group ‘B’ Ranji Trophy encounter at the MA Chidambaram stadium on Monday.
From a seemingly impossible position, Karnataka, on the back of spectacular innings from Ganesh Satish (200 n.o.) and CM Gautam (130 n.o.)), went past Tamil Nadu’s 538/4 declared with seven mandatory overs to spare in the match.
However, with Ganesh on 192 and nearing his first first-class double ton, the Karnataka team management unsurprisingly made the TN bowlers bowl until the 24-year-old reached the landmark which he achieved with an edge down to the third man with 16 balls to go in the day.
“One thing I realised is that this game finished the moment the team got the lead,” said a stern Chandrasekhar. “The batsman may be in his 190s but you have taken the innings lead. Why should the game extend? What sense does it make?
If I wanted to kill the game we could’ve said ‘we’ll bat another twenty overs and then you go get those 620 runs in a short time’. I could’ve made (Dinesh) Kaarthick, who was in such good touch, play for his double hundred as well but I didn’t because we wanted to attack. Not kill the game.”
The former Indian cricketer continued: “Somewhere these rules need to be applied. The sporting spirit needs to apply. I could’ve just thrown the ball and said ‘go get a double hundred’. These things shouldn’t work like that.”
In response, Karnataka’s batting coach J Arun Kumar backed his team’s decision and said it was something that had to be done. “What would he have done if one of his batsmen were in such a position? See, it (double hundred) is not something that happens often and Gans (Satish) completely deserved it. We would’ve been doing wrong had we called him back from that position.”
