Nov 05: Delhi gains a crucial 34-run first innings lead
It was a bowlers' day out at the Ferozeshah Kotla as the wickets were falling like nine pins with 20 wickets tumbling on the first day of the Ranji Trophy Elite league match between Delhi and Rajasthan here on Sunday.
The Delhi track always offers lots of runs to the batsmen and proved nightmare for the bowlers time and again but yesterday it was an altogether different story as batsmen were struggling to get their groove while the whole day belonged to bowlers of both the teams.
Rajasthan won the toss and elected to field and the decision went in to their favour after they bowled out Delhi for a paltry score of 119 in just 38.3 overs but the story went similar in the case of Rajasthan batting as well with the Delhi bowlers bundled them for petty 85 in 35.5 overs taking a crucial 34-run first innings lead.
There was nothing new in the wicket as it was the batsmen of both the sides who let down their team by not applying themselves and rest left with the bowlers, who kept the impetus going their way by bowling at right areas.
Delhi openers Aakash Chopra (4) and Shikhar Dhawan (1) again came for batting on Sunday and safely settled by negotiating the opening over of Pankaj Singh scoring six runs for no loss to extend their lead to 40 runs.
Delhi started on a rousing note and was 62 for 1 at one stage, with both the openers Akash Chopra (16) and Shikhar Dhawan (35) saw the new ball overs quite well but Rajasthan medium-pacers Pankaj Singh and Sumit Mathur did not let them to take the advantage to free their arms. Both the bowlers shared eight wickets together with Pankaj Singh claiming a five–wicket haul.
Rajasthan also started an a bad note surrendering to Delhi attack with part time medium pacer Rajat Bhatia chipping in with three wickets after getting out for duck.
For Delhi Amit Bhandari led the Delhi bowling attack alongwith debutant left-arm seamer Pradeep Sangwan in the absence of injured Ishant Sharma and Ashish Nehra. Bhandari came up with some fine bowling and also held two good catches. Bhandari also got the crucial wicket of Gagan Khoda by trapping him lbw on duck.
Delhi’s bowling coach Manoj Prabhakar was very much disappointed with the way boys had performed, “It was sheer lack of application as twenty wickets fell on a single day”.
BRIEF SCORES
Delhi 1st innings: 119 all out (S Dhawan 35, P Singh 5/43, S Mathur 3/32)
Rajasthan 1st innings: 85 all out (V Saxena 35, R Bhatia 3/16, P Sangwan 3/29)
Delhi 2nd innings: 6 for no loss
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