by A report and scorecard from the first day, courtesy Ajay Mittal
("Acme" on irc) in Pune. The report was summarized from the Indi-
an Express, Pune.
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Manjrekar slams maiden ton. Bombay 311 for 5 outset.
by N Prabhaker
SANJAY Manjrekar continued from where he had left last season.
The Bombay skipper was in crackling form on Wednesday as he ham-
mered a stroke-filled 117, his maiden century in the Irani Trophy
cricket championship, on the opening day against Rest of India at
***hede Stadium.
The Ranji champions lost three wickets for 38 runs in the post
lunch session, the slide which began with the wicket of Manjre-
kar, but still managed to finish the dai with a healthy score,
thanks to their opener Zubin Bharucha's dour unbeaten knock of
98.
The Bombay openers Bharucha and Sunil More were edgy at the
outset. More hung his bat out often to Prashant Vaidya and Bharu-
cha inner-edged Iqbal Sid- diqui to be very nearly bowled. How-
ever, it was the vagaries of the strip which had a say in the
fall of the first wicket.
Bharucha had a life on 35 when wicket-keeper Vijay Yadav went the
wrong way and failed to latch on to the snick off Siddiqui.
Manjrekar was all over the spinners and he smote left-arm
Subramaniam for three successive fours- the last two were swept -
and a six over mid-wicket. He hit 21 boundaries and the six in
his 134-ball knock before another knee-height delivery by Siddi-
qui had him plumb before the wicket. But having been at the
wicket for 161 minutes it was suicidal on Manjrekar's part to
have gone for a wild pull. The 163-run second wicket partnershlp,
which was threatening to take the Rest bowling apart, was real-
ised in 41.2 overs.
Amol Muzumdar fell cheaply while trying to work Siddiqui on the
leg side only to edge.
Sameer Dighe hit a brisk 57 in a 77-run stand for the fifth wick-
et with Bharucha. The stocky Bom- bay wicket-keeper played the
only way he knew - to belt the ball. He ng fours and a six
Scorecard : (end of day 1)
Bombay (Ist inning batting):
Z Bharucha not out 98
S More b Siddiqui 10
S Manjrekar lbw b Siddiqui 117
A Muzumdar c Yadav b Siddiqui 2
S Kulkarni c Rathore b Kapoor 12
S Dighe c Mehra b Vaidya 57
S Bahutule not out 0
Extras ( 2b, 8nb 4lb, 1w) 15
Total (for five wickets off 92 overs) 311
Fall of wickets: 1-27, 2-190, 3-193, 4-228, 5-311
Rest of India Bowling:
Prashant Vaidya 15-5-36-1
Iqbal Siddiqui 19-1-83-3
Obaid Kamal 18-5-50-0
Sunil Subramanium 19-4-63-0
Ashish Kapoor 21-4-73-1
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Not a bad start by Bombay, especially if the pitch holds "va-
garies", as the reporter put it. 311 in a day is pretty good go-
ing. It seems that Bombay has gone with 5 bowlers for this game.
If that is the case, Barucha and Bahutule represent the last
recognized batting pair for Bombay and it is up to them to carry
the total to at least 450 and beyond. The 4 remaining bats may
Ankola, Mhambrey, and any 2 of Manish Patel, Abey Kuruvilla and
Sanjay Patil.
Also, the non-selection of Jatin Paranjpe for this game should be
condemned- a young, talented lefty like him surely deserves a
couple of chances more than he has been given.
Details of the ROI side is not available, but one can guess most
of it ( Vikram Rathore, Ajay Mehra, Vijay Yadav, Prashant Vaidya,
Iqbal Siddiqui, Obaid Kamal, Sunil Subramanium and Ashish Kapoor
are all mentioned in the card). If all these are actually in the
11, its a pretty iffy piece of selection. That leaves only 2
spots open, both to be filled by batsmen. And I there are at
least 4-5 very deserving contenders ( Amre, Shantanu Sugwekar,
Rizwan Shamshad, Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly, to name but a
few). Most, if not all, of these batsmen deserve to be in ahead
of Mehra and possibly even Rathore.
Also, of course, it is more than slightly surprising to see Sunil
Subramanium being picked for the left arm orthodox spinners
spot ahead of Utpal Chatterjee - not that Subramanium isnt good,
but Utpal has been touted as a national contender recently,
and one would have thought he would have been picked here (espe-
cially after his performances in the last couple of seasons). And
neither Hirwani nor Ananthapadmanabhan have made it into the side
- another surprise.
Sadiq [ hoping for a Sairaj ton tomorrow :-) ] Yusuf
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