Crafty Bhatt puts Punjab in a spot of bother

Bhargav added three more wickets to his overnight scalp in the first innings, before taking two more later in the day to leave Punjab tottering at 79 for four in their second innings at stumps here.

For Punjab, opener Sarul Kanwar stood amid the ruins, scoring a brilliant century to help his team reach 243 in their first innings. Kanwar slammed a 192-ball 130 with 14 boundaries and five sixes.

Earlier, Bhargav spun a web with his slow bowling to scalp three Punjab batsman -- Mandeep Singh (9), Pankaj Dharmani (12), Jaskaran Singh (18). R Inder Singh was also dismissed by Bhargav on Thursday.

Being forced to follow on, Punjab yet again depended on Kanwar who hit an unbeaten 42 off 46 balls with the help of eight boundaries.

Brief scores: Group A: At Ahmedabad: Gujarat: 273 all out in 98 overs (Priyank Panchal 63, Niraj Patel 44, Parthiv Patel 31, Pratharesh Parmar 59 n.o.; Ranadeb Bose 4-63, Sourav Sarkar 2-55, Laxmi Ratan Shukla 3-40) vs Bengal: 99/2 in 46 overs (Arindam Das 38).

At Mumbai: Assam: 298 all out in 102.1 overs (Dheeraj Jadhav 79, Tarjinder Singh 74, Abu Nechim 39; Dhawal Kulkarni 2-48, Ramesh Powar 3-92, Abhishek Nayar 2-26, Iqbal Abdulla 2-48) vs Mumbai: 91/3 in 31 overs (Sahil Kukreja 38 n.o., Dhiraj Goswami 2-28).
At Rajkot: Saurashtra: 231/6 in 75.3 overs (Chirag Pathak 58, Bhushan Chauhan 58, Sitanshu Kotak 26, Jaydev Shah 43 n.o.; Vikas Mishra 4-33) vs Delhi.

At Chennai: Tamil Nadu: 335/4 decl in 103 overs (Abhinav Mukund 131, S Badrinath 149; Jai P Yadav 2-65) vs Railways: 40/0 in 17 overs.

Group B: At Vadodara: Baroda: 416 all out vs Punjab: 243 all out in 77.2 overs (Sarul Kanwar 130, Manpreet Singh Gony 35; Sankalp Vohra 2-32, Bhargav Bhatt  4-59, Jyot Chhaya 2-57) and 79/4 in 27 overs (Sarul Kanwar 42 n.o.; Murtuja Vahora 2-21, Bhargav Bhatt  2-18).

At Kanpur: Uttar Pradesh: 197 all out in 76.4 overs vs Himachal Pradesh: 23/2 in 14 overs (Rudra Pratap Singh 2-18).