Ranji Trophy 2017-18, Round 5, Day 3: Review

The third day of the fifth round of the ongoing Ranji Trophy saw most of the games heading towards a tame draw. Apart from the matches of group D, no other matches are moving towards the result. Chhattisgarh registered the victory on the third day itself by an innings and 114 runs over Himachal Pradesh. HP couldn’t go past 200 in both their innings and collapsed to 176 in their second innings eventually giving away the match. All the bowlers bowled well for the visitors and scripted a memorable win for their team.

Vidarbha, on the other hand, are assured of the points on the basis of first innings lead. But they would love to scalp the remaining seven wickets of Bengal who trail by 206 runs following on. The visitors first bowled them out for 207 and then gave them follow on as Bengal ended the day on 86/3. Goa managed to eke out a slender lead of 7 runs against Services and were bowled out on 270. Services, in their second innings, scored 108/3 until stumps and now lead by 101 runs. Goa might earn the crucial points thanks to their lead in the first innings.

Baroda needs only six wickets now to secure an outright victory against Mumbai at Wankhede. The hosts finished the day on 102/4 after conceding 404 run lead in the first innings. Baroda continued to dominate with the bat earlier and rode on the ton from Swapnil Singh as they declared on 575/9. Andhra bundled Tripura out for just 315 runs and secured a lead of 87 runs before ending the day on 51/1 until stumps on day 3. Odisha ended the day strongly on 286/4 in reply to 530 posted by Tamil Nadu on the board.

Uttar Pradesh would look for an outright victory on the final day against Assam as they finished the day on 229/2 in the second innings courtesy the unbeaten ton from Umang Sharma. Earlier in the day, Assam was bowled out on 318 and conceded the 31-run lead to UP. Railways trail Maharashtra by 151 runs with five wickets in hand going into the final day. In reply to 481 posted by the hosts at MCA Stadium in Pune, Railways rode on the half-centuries by three middle-order batsmen and scored 330/5. Gautam Gambhir continued his good run and stayed unbeaten on 135 as Delhi scored 277/4 but still trail by 372 runs of the mammoth score of Karnataka.

Jharkhand tried their best to enforce a result by declaring with 9 down for 292 in their first innings. But Jammu and Kashmir extended their lead up to 330 runs by the end of the day and only a miracle would see them losing on Sunday. The lower order of Rajasthan added some crucial runs as they were bowled out for 150 conceding 73 runs lead to Haryana. The hosts then scored 179/5 by the end of the day before the play was stopped due to bad light. The run-fest continued in Rajkot as Gujarat replied strongly to the score of Saurashtra. Priyank Panchal scored a magnificent century and the hosts managed to post 304/4 on the board but still trail by 266 runs.

Brief Scores

Group A

Uttar Pradesh 349/10 & 229/2 (Umang Sharma 131*) vs Assam 318/10 (Sibsankar Roy 72, Rishav Das 52; Saurabh Kumar 5/54) at Guwahati

Maharashtra 481/10 (RH Motwani 189, AR Bawane 92) vs Railways 330/5 (P Singh 73) at Pune

Karnataka 649/10 (Mayank Agarwal 176, Stuart Binny 118, Shreyas Gopal 92, Manish Pandey 74) vs Delhi 277/4 ( Gautam Gambhir 135*)  at Alur

Group B

Jammu & Kashmir 376/10 & 246/7 (Parvez Rasool 70 ; Utakarsh Singh 3/40) vs Jharkhand 292/9 dec (Md Nazim Siddiqui 70, Anand Singh 68) at Jamshedpur

Haryana 223/10 & 179/5 (S Chauhan 65) vs Team Rajasthan 150/10 at Lahli

Saurashtra 570/10 (Cheteshwar Pujara 182, Snell S Patel 156) vs Gujarat 304/4 (P Panchal 145, R Bhatt 75*) at Rajkot

Group C

Andhra 402/10 & 51/1 vs Tripura 315/10 (M Murasingh 81, Gurinder Singh 81) at Agartala

Tamil Nadu 530/8 dec (Murali Vijay 140, Baba Aparajith 109*, Vijay Shankar 100) vs Odisha 286/4 (Natraj Behera 91) at Cuttack

Mumbai 171/10 & 102/4 (Prithvi Shaw 56, Ajinkya Rahane 28*) vs Baroda 575/9 dec (Aditya Waghmode 138, Swapnil Singh 164, Deepak Hooda 75, Vishnu Solanki 54) at Wankhede

Group D

Vidarbha 499/10 vs Bengal 207/10 (KB Ghosh 50, Manoj Tiwary 50) & 86/3 at Kolkata

Services 263/10 & 108/3 vs Goa 270/6 (Keenan 70; S Pandey 5/61) at Delhi

Himachal Pradesh 175/10 & 167/10 (Md Shahnawaz 6/53) vs Chhattisgarh 456/10 (Rishabh Tiwari 131) at Dharamsala