Kolkata: 25-year-old batsman Prashant Chopra perhaps became the first ever in the history of the game to score a triple ton on his birthday as Himachal Pradesh piled up the runs to dominate the second day of the Ranji Trophy match against Punjab in Dharamsala on Saturday.
Chopra hit a total of 44 fours and two sixes in his marathon 338-run knock and helped Himachal put up a huge 729/8 in their first innings. Wicket-keeper batsman Ankush Bains chipped in with a valuable 80 of 113 balls hitting 12 fours while all-rounder Rishi Dhawan missed out on a half-century by just a run as he fell to the bowling of Manpreet Gony. 26 runs each were scored by the lower order which includes the likes of Akash Vashisht and Pankaj Jaiswal as the home side looked to bat out Punjab out of the contest.
For Punjab, Sandeep Sharma was the most successful bowler with four wickets for 149 runs while Gony scalped two. Abhishek Sharma and Pargat Singh scalped a wicket apiece.
Punjab nonetheless came up with a strong reply as they ended the day at 110/1 only losing the wicket of opener Pargat Singh for a well-made 64 of 69 deliveries.
Skipper Jiwanjot Singh and Uday Kaul would resume batting on the third day and would hope to take their team as close to this huge target as possible.
Meanwhile, veteran Indian opener Gautam Gambhir scored a brilliant century against Assam on the second day. The stylish southpaw shared a 207-run stand with youngster Nitish Rana and helped Delhi end the day on 269/4 after skipper Ishant Sharma took five wickets and helped bowl Assam out for just 258 runs.
Brief scores-
Punjab 110/1 (Pargat Singh 64, Jiwanjot Singh 34 n.o; Gurvinder Singh 1/4) trail Himachal Pradesh 729/8 (Prashant Chopra 338, Paras Dogra 99; Sandeep Sharma 4/149) by 619 runs.
Other matches-
Delhi– Delhi 269/4 (Gautam Gambhir 136 n.o, Nitish Rana 110; Abu Nechim 3/39) lead Assam 258 all out (Swarupam Purkayastha 66, Gokul Sharma 51; Ishant Sharma 5/38) by 11 runs.
Thiruvananthapuram– Kerala 250/8 (Mohammed Azharuddeen 51, Jalaj Saxena 47; Sunny Gupta 6/94) lead Jharkhand 202 all out (Ishan Kishan 45, Ashish Kumar 25; Jalaj Saxena 6/50) by 48 runs.
Delhi– Services 103/1 ( Navneet Singh 44, Ravi Chauhan 42; Mohammad Shami 1/33) trail Bengal 552/9 (Sudip Chatterjee 115, Manoj Tiwary 69; Sachidanand Pandey 4/108) by 449 runs.
Porvorim– Goa 28/0 (Sumiran Amonkar 13 n.o, Swapnil Asnodkar 8 n.o; Sumit Ruikar 0/2) trail Chattisgarh 458 all out (Manoj Singh 125, Jatin Saxena 82; Darshan Wagha Misal 5/79) by 430 runs.
Indore– Baroda 36/2 (Kedar Devdhar 20 n.o, Pinal Shah 15 n.o; Puneet Datey 1/10) trail Madhya Pradesh 551/8 decl (Shubham Sharma 196, Ankit Sharma 104; Swapnil Singh 3/136) by 515 runs.
Lucknow– Railways 182 and 27/3 (Arindam Ghosh 9 n.o, Vidyadhar Ghosh 7 n.o; Ankit Rajpoot 2/6) trail Uttar Pradesh 250 all out (Akshdeep Nath 75, Shivam Chaudhary 44; Anureet Singh 3/42) by 41 runs.
Jaipur– Jammu and Kashmir 150/1 (Ahmed Bandy 72 n.o, Shubham Khajuria 53; Tanveer Ul-Haq 1/18) trail Rajasthan 330 all out (Robin Bist 113, Ashok Menaria 69; Mohammed Mudhasir 5/81) by 180 runs.
Chennai– Andhra Pradesh 231/7 (Bodapati Sumanth 72, Ashwin Hebbar 64; Lakshminarayanan Vignesh 2/36) lead Tamil Nadu 176 all out (Baba Aparijith 51, Krishnamoorthy Vignesh 25; Bhargav Bhatt 4/52) by 55 runs
Rohtak– Haryana 107 and 93/6 (Chaitanya Bishnoi 53, Rajat Paliwal 13; Shaurya Sanandia 2/15) trail Saurashtra 278 all out (Prerak Mankad 68, Sheldon Jackson 51; Ashish Hooda 6/61) by 78 runs.
Bhubaneswar– Odisha vs Tripura (play stopped due to rain)
Hyderabad– Hyderabad vs Maharashtra (play stopped due to rain)