Ranji Trophy 2014: Bengal go to sleep after lunch

Tiwary has made some technical adjustments of late, cutting down his backlift and making the arc of the bat swing straighter. But success in List A games notwithstanding, he has been struggling with his footwork in the longer format since India ‘A’ team tour of Australia earlier this year. He needs to sort it out quickly. Tiwary’s wicket was a shot in the arm for Karnataka. And once the Bengal mainstay was exposed, Karnataka made rapid inroads.

Bengal went to lunch at 169 for three with Sudip Chatterjee and Sreevats Goswami batting on 56 and 23 respectively. They lost seven wickets for 79 runs in 28.1 overs after the break to follow on. It tilted the balance completely in Karnataka’s favour on the third day of this Ranji Trophy Group A fixture at Eden Gardens on Tuesday.

Chatterjee, who applied himself very well in the first session, was out for 57, trying to play across the line, after an exaggerate shuffle, to a Vinay delivery. Laxmi Ratan Shukla showed positive intent with a lovely off drive but Stuart Binny started to trouble him with his swing.

First, an edge was dropped at first slip by Robin Uthappa. Undaunted, the Karnataka all-rounder produced a beauty of an inswinger just two balls later to have the Bengal captain out leg before. Subhajit Banerjee was taken brilliantly behind the stumps by CM Gautam off Abhimanyu Mithun and the tail offered very little resistance.

Final nail 

Karnataka didn’t use their lone specialist spinner Shreyas Gopal till the 84th over but as Bengal started to inch closer in their pursuit of saving the follow-on, the leggie was introduced into the attack. Goswami, who till then had played very sensibly for his 68, went for a sweep to a faster delivery and missed it completely. It was a simple leg before decision and the follow-on was enforced with the hosts finishing off with a deficit of 157 runs.

Starting on an overnight 62 for one, Bengal were all out for 251.

Karnataka bowled well as a unit, though fielding, at times, was poor. Vinay and Sreenath Aravind took three wickets each. Mithun bagged two. The best part of their effort was that they consistently bowled in the right areas and waited for the batters to make mistakes. A panic-stricken Bengal batting line-up was not game for the challenge.

When Bengal started their second innings, opener Arindam Das was hit on the chest by a delivery from Vinay that rose off a length. He fell on the pitch and the physio and paramedics rushed in. The injury was not serious and Das recovered well to continue. He, however, has been very sedate in his approach with 11 runs from 46 balls. Bengal, too, are moving at snail’s pace, scoring 46 runs, for the loss of Rohan Banerjee’s wicket, in 20 overs. Karnataka would be disappointed not to wrap things up on the final day.

Brief scores: Karnataka 408 all out vs Bengal 251 all out in 85.1 overs (Sreevats Goswami 68, Sudip Chatterjee 57; Sreenath Aravind 3/31, Vinay Kumar 3/56) and 46/1 in 20 overs (Sudip Chatterjee 20*; Sreenath Aravind 1/10)