Tandon strikes

Patna, Feb 24: First Ashish Tandon struck and then the rains did. Thus the advantage which Vadodara gained from Tandon’s fiery first spell (8-3-20-3) was swept away. And Bihar are still 53 runs short of avoiding a follow-on with the last recognised pair on the crease.

But in the larger context, rain brought disaster for both the teams in the Group C Super League Ranji Trophy encounter. Vadodara, with three points from two games and Bihar, with five points from same number of games, need an outright win here to stay in contention for the quarter-final stage. But with 210 minutes of playing time lost today, a draw seems to be the only possible outcome.

SCOREBOARD

Vadodara (1st innings) 389.

Bihar (first innings): Sunil Kumar lbw Tandon 0, CM Jha b Arothe 12, Rajiv Kumar c More b Tandon 73, Tariq-ur-Rehman c Mongia b Tandon 22, Shahid Arfi batting 26, Sumit Panda c More b Tandon 4, Vineet Saxena batting 28. Extras (nb-11, w-1, lb-5, b-5) 22. Total (for five wickets, 69 overs): 187.

Fall ofwickets: 1-2, 2-80, 3-103, 4-125, 5-129.

Bowling: Tandon 19-3-73-4, Wakaskar 9-3-23-0, Kadri 10-4-13-0, Mulherkar 9-4-21-0, Arothe 9-3-15-1.