Victory for Punjab; Pujara grinds TN

Punjab produced a fine bowling effort before their batsmen just about held their nerve to carve out a three-wicket win against Haryana on the third day of their low-scoring Group A match of the Ranji Trophy here on Saturday.

Overnight 117/5, Haryana were bowled out for 155, leaving Punjab a paltry target of 135 to chase. The hosts overhauled the target after much struggle to grab the six points.

Sandeep Sharma was the star with the ball for Punjab as he snared six wickets for 50 in his 17.2 overs. VRV Singh also chipped in with figures of 3/50 to round off a fine bowling performance by the home team.

The top-scorer for Haryana in the second innings was Avi Barot, who made 31 off 87 deliveries, including four hits to the fence. Punjab made heavy weather of the chase but eventually pulled through to win the match with a day to spare.

Himachal shine

Himachal Pradesh trounced Assam by an innings and 221 run after the visiting batsmen collapsed miserably on the third and penultimate day of their Group ‘C’ encounter in Dharamsala. After amassing a mammoth 463 for nine in their first innings in response to Assam’s paltry 81 all out, Himachal bowled out the visiting side for 161 to record the huge win.

Baroda bag six points

Bhargav Bhatt scalped five wickets to hand Baroda a facile 246-run win over Madhya Pradesh in their Group ‘B’ encounter in Vadodara. Needing 336 for a win, Madhya Pradesh, overnight 58/5, had no chance of overhauling Baroda’s total and their challenge frittered away meekly as they were bundled out for 90 in 44.4 overs.


Group A: At Rohtak: Haryana: 163 all out and (O/n: 117/5): 155 all out in 53.2 overs (Avi Barot 31, Nitin Saini 25, Sachin Rana 31; Sandeep Sharma 6-50, VRV Singh 3-50) lt to Punjab: 184 and 135/7 in 45 overs (Sandeep Sharma 37 n.o.,  Gurkeerat Singh 37; Mohit Sharma 3-38, Harshal Patel 3-40). Punjab: 6 points; Haryana: 0.
At Jamshedpur: Jharkhand: 289 all out and 28/0 in 22 overs vs Gujarat (O/n: 168/2): 352/9 decl in 122.2 overs (Samit Gohel 80, Parthiv Patel 189; Shabaz Nadeem 2-106, Samar Quadri 4-73, Sunny Gupta 2-57).

At Mumbai: Mumbai: 261 all out and (O/n: 179/1) 381/4 decl in 80 overs (Aditya Tare 172, Ajinkya Rahane 133, Suryakumar Yadav 49 n.o.; Ravi Jangid 2-88) vs Vidarbha: 113 all out and 177/8 in 41 overs (Shalabh Shrivastava 69, Shrikant Wagh 34 batting; Shardul Thakur 2-46, Vishal Dabholkar 2-21).

Group B: At Vadodara: Baroda: 152 all out and 244 all out bt Madhya Pradesh: 60 all out and (O/n: 58/5) 90 all out in 44.4 overs (Bhargav Bhatt 5-37, Ketul Patel 2-15, Yusuf Pathan 3-27). Baroda: 6; Madhya Pradesh: 0.

At Jaipur: Uttar Pradesh: 226 all out and (O/n: 46/2) 319/5 decl in 93 overs (Prashant Gupta 144, Arish Alam 42, Parvinder Singh 50 n.o.; Aniket Choudhary 3-48) vs Rajasthan: 185 all out and 15/0 in 4 overs).

At Delhi: Bengal: 431 all out vs Services (O/n: 39/0): 261/6 in 101 overs (Pratik Desai 52, Rajat Paliwal 25, Soumya Swain 56 batting, Vishnu Tiwari 71; Ashok Dinda 3-75, Saurashish Lahiri 2-62).

At Chennai: Tamil Nadu: 565/8 decl vs Saurashtra (12/1): 326/3 in 93 overs (Cheteshwar Pujara 152 batting, Sheldon Jackson 28, Jaydev Shah 133 batting).
Group C: At Dharamsala: Assam: 81 all out and (O/n: 97/6) 161 all out in 53.5 overs (Dheeraj Jadhav 52, Jamaluddin Syed 37, Kunal Saikia 25; Vikramjeet Malik 3-40, Rishi Dhawan 5-58) lt to Himachal Pradesh: 463/9 decl. Himachal Pradesh: 7; Assam: 0.

At Cuddapah: Andhra: 317 all out and 27/1 in 14 overs vs Maharashtra (O/n: 196/3): 440 all out in 127.5 overs (Vijay Zol 73, Kedar Jadhav 173, Ankit Bawne 54, Rohit Motwani 95 n.o.; Paidikalva Vijaykumar 6-82, Kakani Harish 2-90).

At Porvorim: Goa: 252 all out and (O/n: 8/0) 177 all out in 70.2 overs (Keenan Vaz 32, Buddhadev Mangaldas 41; Rana Dutta 2-51, Manisankar Murasingh 2-40, Sanjay Majumder 2-36, Kaushal Acharjee 2-14) vs Tripura: 174 all out and 72/2 in 28 overs (KB Pawan 36 batting).

At Jammu: Jammu & Kashmir: 377 all out and 111/1 in 27 overs (Adil Rishi 68) vs Kerala (O/n: 184/2): 302 all out in 114 overs (VA Jagadeesh 106, Sanju Samson 25, Rohan Prem 86, Robert Fernandez 26; Samiullah Beigh 4-76, Ram Dayal 2-64, Mohammed Mudhasir 2-36).