Journalism of Courage
The ghosts of Maharashtras previous home defeat came back to haunt them as they went down for a second successive loss at home to Karnataka in the Ranji Trophy Elite B Group Tournament.
Maharashtra faced an uphill task when they were bowled out cheaply in their first innings for a paltry 105 runs. In response,Karnataka amassed a massive score of 553 in their first innings. Never looking to be a match that was in their hands,Maharashtra further let the match slip when they lost their first four wickets with only 39 runs on the board. It looked like they would fold up within the next 100 runs but A Bawne and R Motwani steadied the sinking ship by playing valuable knocks of 136 runs and 78 runs respectively.
Bawne in particular was impressive as he let loose a flurry of shots to cut,pull and hit the Karnataka bowlers to all ends of the park.
Lending him able support was Rohit Motwani who also took the Karnataka bowling attack to the cleaners. So clinical was Bawne in his attack that he mercilessly plundered the bowling for a total of 22 boundaries. The duo put on a 188 run partnership to take the score to 227 but once Motwani fell the Maharashtra innings looked like it had lost its sting. However G Gaikwad who came in to bat after him scored a quickfire 47 that was laced with eight boundaries to take the total till 294. But once Bawne and Gaikwad were dismissed it was already game over for Maharastra.
The last straw coffin came with the dismissal of their last batsmen with the total reading 320 on the score board. Clearly falling short of overcoming Karnataka’s first innings total of 553,Maharashtra were left with an innings and 128 runs defeat.
This was Maharashtras third loss in the tournament. The words of their coach came back to sting them again: he had mentioned earlier on that it was due to their poor first innings total in their first home match that they were left with a heavy loss back then. Ironically the same held true again,in the match against Karnataka.
While Maharastra had little to cheer about outside the heroics of Ankit Bawne the Karnataka team drew plenty of positives in the game. Right from R Vinaykumar’s 8 wicket haul from both the innings to the centuries posted in by KB Pavan G Satish and Amit Verma they had a lot to cheer for.
