Karnataka turn around to set up a humdinger

Giving Chipli company at stumps was the dependable Barrington Rowland (26), who played perfect foil in the opening stand that saw Karnataka bring down the first innings deficit to just 52 runs. After yesterday’s nightmare, Karnataka’s openers finally delivered, and in contrasting styles. While Chipli enthralled with several elegant drives off the front foot to the mid-wicket fence, the experienced Rowland knew that his job here was to play second fiddle, which he did without any fuss against a Bengal bowling that looked drastically off-colour and less effective compared to yesterday.

With the Eden wicket fast getting easier to bat on, Karnataka clawed back into the match the hard way, doing enough to get over the 89-run horror outing in the first innings. Their effort wasn’t as spectacular as Ranadeb Bose and Sourav Sarkar’s bowling yesterday. But the manner in which their bowlers chipped away at the Bengal batting this afternoon, following it up with a solid second innings response, the match is again evenly poised.

As the Bengal camp reckons that they still hold a slight advantage in the match, it’s largely because of a mature partnership for the fifth wicket between opener Arindam Das (88) and Laxmi Ratan Shukla (41).

Brief score: Karnataka 89 & 97/0 in 30 overs (Bharat Chipli batting 64, Barrington Rowland batting 26) v Bengal 238 in 100.1 overs (Arindam Das 88, Rohan Gavaskar 63, LR Shukla 41, Srinivasa Dhananjaya 3/45, Balachandra Akhil 3/52).