by A report and scorecard from the first day, courtesy Ajay Mittal
("Acme" on irc) in Pune. The report was summarized from the Indian
Express, Pune. (Apologies for the editing - this is how it showed up,
and it's too much of a pain to fix it :-)
*************************************************
Manjrekar slams maiden ton
Bombay 311 for 5 outset.
by N Prabhaker
SANJAY Manjrekar con-
tinued from where he had
left last season. The Bom-
bay skipper was in crack-
ling form on Wednesday as he
hammered a stroke-filled 117, his
maiden century in the Irani Tro-
phy 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
Bharucha inner-edged Iqbal Sid-
diqui to be very nearly bowled.
However, 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 Siddiqui
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 realised in 41.2 overs.
Amol Muzumdar fell cheaply
while trying to work Siddiqui on
the leg side only to edge.
(* sound of a strong man weeping bitter tears, in the background *)
Sameer Dighe hit a brisk 57 in a
77-run stand for the fifth wicket
with Bharucha. The stocky Bom-
bay wicket-keeper played the only
way he knew - to belt the ball. He
ng fours and a six
( here the report was most unfortunately cut off - it was pretty
close to the end of the day, though, methinks. Suffice it to say that
Dighe was brilliant, as usual :-)
********************************
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 ( 2bb, 8nbj 41b, Iw) 15
(this is how it showed up :-). I presume 2b, 8nb, 4lb, 1w, but am
not certain).
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
******************************************************
Not a bad start by Bombay, especially if the pitch holds
"vagaries", as the reporter put it. 311 in a day is pretty good going.
However, it may not be as good as it sounds - I dont know what the full
team is, but it seems to me 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. Iam presuming the 4 remaining bats are
Ankola, Mhambrey, and any 2 of Manish Patel, Abey Kuruvilla and Sanjay
Patil. (Am wondering if Bombay opted to go with a 4-pronged pace
attack in this game :-)
Also, I'd like to condemn the non-selection of Jatin Paranjpe
for this game - a young, talented lefty like him surely deserves a couple
of chances more than he has been given.
We dont know what the ROI side is either, 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, IMHO. That leaves only 2 spots open,
both to be filled by batsmen. And I can think of 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, IMHO.
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 (especially 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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