Kolkata: Abhimanyu Easwaran and Anustup Majumdar saved Bengal the blushes on the first day’s play against Gujarat at the Sawai Man Singh Stadium in Jaipur on Thursday.
Gujarat won the toss and opted to bowl first on a flat wicket and their plans succeeded as Bengal were reduced to 59/4 at one point of time. Opening batsman Abhishek Raman (5) was the first one to be dismissed and Writtick Chatterjee who was given an opportunity at number three, soon followed him. But opener Easwaran and Anustup Majumdar, who had scored back-to-back centuries against Goa in their last league match played crucial knocks and stitched a 175-run partnership.
Right-arm fast bowler Ishwar Chaudhary ripped through the Bengal top order as he turned out to be the best bowler for the defending champions on the first day. Chintan Gaja also got two wickets.
Courtesy these gritty knocks from Easwaran and Anustup, Bengal have reached to a decent 261/6 at the end of day’s play and Easwaran believes that Bengal can put pressure on the defending champions if they have atleast 300 runs on the board.
“When I came to bat it was critical as we had lost three wickets. But Anustup and myself decided to play out the first two hours safely and then try to play the shots. It is cold and a sharp wind blows in the morning making batting difficult,” said Easwaran.
He added, “If we can go upto 300 we can challenge Gujarat. We have a good bowling attack. I wanted to continue with the bat but my bad that I could not.”
It would take some effort from the tail-enders to help Bengal reach to a decent target on the second day. The Manoj Tiwary led side would definitely look up to the likes of Ashoke Dinda and Ishan Porel to help them get back in the match.
Brief scores–
Jaipur: Bengal 261/6 (Abhimanyu Easwaran 129, Anustup Majumdar 94; Ishwar Chaudhary 3/49) vs Gujarat
Nagpur: Karnataka 115/1 (Mayank Agarwal 62 n.o, Ravikumar Samarth 40; Shivam Dubey 1/11) trail Mumbai 173 all out (Dhawal Kulkarni 75, Akhil Herwadkar 32; Vinay Kumar 6/34) by 58 runs
Vijayawada: Madhya Pradesh 223/6 (Ankit Dane 59, Naman Ojha 49; Vikas Mishra 3/40) vs Delhi
Surat: Vidarbha 45/3 (Sanjay Ramaswamy 17, Wasim Jaffer 12; KC Akshay 2/14) vs Kerala