Bengal thrown offtrack by Rlys

Day Two began badly for Bengal and didn’t improve. Yadav built on his overnight 69 to end with 93, which threw Bengal’s plan out of gear. Add to that a cloud cover, four seamers — Harvinder Singh, Santosh Saxena, Sanjay Bangar and Yadav — with local experience, the green-tinged wicket, and Bengal were forced to fall back on a Plan B they didn’t have.

What followed then was the sort of thing domestic cricket spectators fear the most: a team with established batsmen going into their shell. The Bengal batsmen had 64 overs bowled at them till bad light stopped play, and only 153 runs were scored at the criminal average of 2.39!

The visitors’ line-up included former India caps Devang Gandhi, Deep Dasgupta, Rohan Gavaskar and Laxmi Ratan Shukla. Add to the veteran Nikhil Haldipur and Arindam Das, and it’s a line-up that should have done better. But, as Railways coach Vinod Sharma later explained, ‘‘Once we got the extra runs in the morning and then got them down at 56 for two, they became totally defensive.’’

Admittedly, the Railways’ pacers did well, sticking to their job manfully with the overcast conditions helping them along. But the Bengal batsmen made the four medium pacers look far better than they are. A bit like Bangladesh facing up to McGrath-Lee-Gillespie.

Further proof that it was all in the mind lay in the fact that the wicket-takers for Railways were Saxena and Yadav…both of the military medium variety.

Day One was a pleasure to be part of. Day Two torrid. And it will be up to the Bengal batsmen to work out their plans on Day Three for the game to move in a logical direction.