Motera crawls back to Dark Ages

If there8217;s one word that can sum up proceedings at the Ranji tie between Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh here, it8217;s 8216;boring8217;....

If there8217;s one word that can sum up proceedings at the Ranji tie between Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh here, it8217;s 8216;boring8217;. If Gujarat managed only 207 in the first day, MP scored at less than two runs per over through the whole of Day Three today, to score 170 from 90 overs.

It8217;s no wonder then, that the only people present at the ground outside of the players and officials were a handful of us local reporters and less than five people from around the ground.

And the respective coaches defended their players, providing a variety of reasons for the boredom.

MP8217;s coach Devashish Nilosey, for example, said: 8216;8216;We kept losing wickets and the batsmen took it upon themselves to be cautious and played defensively.8217;8217;

For his part, Gujarat chief coach Aunshuman Gaekwad said that it was some disciplined bowling by both sides which has resulted in slow scoring rates. 8216;8216;The pitch has also not been consistent and that made it difficult for batting,8221; Gaekwad said.

What neither said, however, is that the attitude of the two teams was governed by the situation they are in. Gujarat need to overtake Delhi for a spot in the semi-finals and MP is battling to avoid relegation. 8216;Safety first8217; then, was the logical policy.

Gaekwad agreed, saying, 8216;8216;This is not interesting to watch, but nobody would want to take risks and throw the match away. We can take certain risks but not so much that we will lose out on the result.8217;8217;

Story continues below this ad

Whatever the logic, it was cricket at its worst with MP8217;s Abbas Ali spending the best part of the day batting with his pads and getting good support from fellow pad-men Devendra Bundela 19 from 122 balls and Yogesh Golwalkar 23 from 107. Abbas made 30 from 127 balls.

BRIEF SCORES

	nbsp;	IN MUMBAI Mumbai: 292 all out 038; 264 for 8 S Bahutule 107 not out, Ramesh Powar 65; Sunil Joshi 3/103 vs Karnataka: 166 all out R Barrington 43, Robin Uthappa 39; N Kulkarni 5/39, R Powar 4/70 IN AHMEDABAD Gujarat: 353 all out vs Madhya Pradesh: 209 for 7 S Abbas Ali 30, A Patwardhan 34; A Makda 4/58, H Majumdar 3/52 IN KOLKATA Bengal: 240 all out 038; 190 for 3 D Dasgupta 56, Rakesh Krishnan 34, LR Shukla batting 44, R Gavaskar batting 34; A Bhandari 2/42 vs Delhi: 251 all out M Manhas 79, V Dahiya 73, Rajat Bhatia 39; SS Paul 5/89, Ranadeb Bose 5/53 IN ANANTAPUR Railways: 263 all out 038; 151 for no loss A Pagnis batting 107, S Bangar batting 40 vs Andhra Pradesh: 202 all out Satya Kumar Varma 36, K Sahabuddin 33; M Yadav 4/61 IN HYDERABAD Hyderabad: 233 all out 038; 149 all out VVS Laxman 60; Vikram Singh 6/40 beat Punjab: 105 all out A Kakkar 48; S Vishnuvardhan 3/39, Kaushik Reddy 3/39 and 217 all out RS Sodhi 35, Gaurav Gupta 87 not out; NP Singh 4/62, Inder Reddy 3/29 Points: Hyderabad 4; Punjab 0 IN KOLHAPUR Maharashtra: 394 all out 038; 119 all out Rudra P Singh 5/33, AW Zaidi 3/42 vs Uttar Pradesh: 282 all out S Raina 67, R Shamshad 60, Praveen Gupta 36 not out; Ranjit Khirid 6/51, A Sanklecha 3/53 038; 59/1 Jyoti P Yadav batting 36 IN VADODARA Tamil Nadu: 152 all out 038; 183 all out Dinesh Kaarthick 32, S Sharath 32; IS Pathan 3/49, Yousuf Pathan 3/43 lost to Baroda: 64 all out 038; 272 for 6 C Williams 53, Kiran Powar 90 not out, Y Pathan 81 not out; R Ramkumar 3/72 Points: Baroda 4; Tamil Nadu	nbsp;